Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … Things weren’t good: Alberto García-Alix

 

‘Each boxing match is a story: a drama without words. Alberto García-Alix’s photographs are also condensed stories, silent but eloquent stories. These are images imbued with a lyricism and stripped of artifice, poetry that always finds a place to settle within the framework: the tension in the foreshortening of a face, the tip of a shoe, a skewered vagina, the body of a bird, fuzzy profiles of a building… Direct poetry that explodes before our eyes with the radiance of a whiplash.

‘If someone put us in the difficult situation of having to choose only one of the topics dealt with by García-Alix in his work, that which summarizes its totality, that would be the human body. Its flesh, bones, and also the light that hides in its gut. And in the end, inescapably, the fight is bound be a body-to-body between Alberto and the light.’ — Alberto García-Alix official website

‘Alberto García-Alix defines his portraits as a confrontation with his own model. Garcia-Alix is one of the leading figures of the movement known as La Movida Madrileña leaving behind well-known and powerful images of this cultural movement’s youth. Among its members are some of his friends, who subsequently have become renowned personalities in different fields: Pedro Almodóvar, Rossy de Palma, Emma Suárez, Camarón de la Isla and many others. Often violently shameless, his works are recurrently raw and naked portraits. They are often considered to be overreactions but their expressive power and graphic effectiveness is undeniable.’ — collaged

 

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Further

Alberto García-Alix Site
Alberto García-Alix @ kamel mennour
Alberto García Alix @ Vimeo
Alberto Garcia-Alix///Oficial @ instagram
Alberto García-Alix: Un Mundo traicionado
Book: ‘Alberto García-Alix: Lo que dura un beso’
Book: ‘ALBERTO GARCÍA-ALIX, NICOLÁS COMBARRO’
Book: ‘Alberto Garcia Alix: Valparaiso’
Alberto García-Alix, homme d’images devenu image
Altérité-Latéralité : Le côté féminin d’Alberto García Alix
“Siempre tuve la sensación de ser un fracasado.”
Pablo Llorca on Alberto García Alix
Alberto García-Alix: Un Horizonte Falso
Alberto García-Alix – “Self-portrait”
Alberto Garcia Alix >< “Une saison en enfer”
Alberto García-Alix, to focus on misfits

 

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La línea de sombra (2017)

 

‘Alberto García Alix. La línea de sombra is a first-hand testament to the ups and downs Alberto García-Alix experienced before finding his path. This documentary is directed by Nicolás Combarro and produced by Morelli Producciones, with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española. It is an impactful film that delves into the biography and creative process of one of the most important photographers on the Spanish art scene and a leading name for a whole generation.

‘The film explores a journey from present to past, a dialogue between his life and his oeuvre. It is an opportunity to discover the work of Alberto Garcia-Alix through the language of documentary cinema. All in all it surveys the life and work of García Alix, making the spectator witness to a period and a generation that spans from the underground intellectuality of the 70s and the Madrid cultural movement known as the Movida to his artistic maturity and international recognition.

‘As Nicolas Combarro points out, “García-Alix’s life and artistic career allow us to trace the course of a Spanish social and artistic movement, which is always difficult to approach. The years I have spent working with him have given me a privileged insight into a way of understanding art from the inside”.’ — AC/E

Trailer

Entrevista al director Nicolás Combarro

 

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Extras

Heroin: the Limbo that precedes Hell

An interview with Alberto García-Alix

Alberto Garcia-Alix

 

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Interview

 

– Your photos of the ‘70s and ‘80s often remind me of photos of young people in the US in the ‘60s. I think it’s not just because of the clothes or the fact that the photos are in black and white, but because of the spirit of rebellion and discovery that you captured. But maybe that’s a very gringo attitude. Can you explain the feeling for young people at that moment after the end of Franco’s regime? For artists, was there a sense of being part of a movement?

I started taking photos with the death of the dictator. For young people and for the whole country it opened a new world of hope and restlessness.

I had a friend called Elvis who made really beautiful knitted clothes. I’d known her since the end of the 1970s, when Spain had just been freed from Francoism and all the drugs began. She had a band and she was really wild – a true character.

Elvis and I ran into each other again in 1999 or 2000 and I said I would shoot her clothes, which were modelled by friends as there wasn’t much money about. Then I decided to put some of them on and take a picture of myself. I was the only man wearing them. I made up my eyes but I didn’t do my hair – and I had a lot more back then. The power in this picture comes from my hands: they’re clenched and that brings a certain violence. My face is showing no emotion – since that would make it seem staged. I don’t like dramatising faces: I don’t like to weigh down the mask of the face with smiles or whatever. I can see past the clothes and see myself straight away. It’s one of my best self-portraits and I’ve done hundreds. I’ve taken pictures of myself naked or even masturbating. When it comes to my own camera, I have no shame whatsoever.

– There is a characteristic which stands out in your photographs and that is the sensation of naturalness which they transmit….

More than seeking naturalness, what I seek with my photographs is what I call ‘virtue’. To achieve this I always seek the face of my subject, fixing his or her eyes on a point which will be correspond to the eye of the spectator, so that the spectator is also observed by the image. That is the mystery of photography for me, its virtue: that is, that the image should observe the spectator.

– Following that line of reasoning, would the eye of the spectator then be the eye which finally gives meaning to the photograph that is appearing?

It is not entirely true that photography has no soul in itself. Obviously the spectator contributes a sense of agreement with the guidelines or cultural models he has experienced. A man in 1700 would see a Velazquez with different eyes from the ones I see it with today. But in any case, there is a moment when a photograph (we’re talking about a photograph with a certain degree of quality) breathes on its own account, independently of the interpretation of the person looking at it.

– Has there been any unusual moment in your life which marked the start of your fascination with photography?

There is always a moment at which one begins to feel trapped by what one does, by what one likes. It’s usually said that a good teacher is one who’s capable of making us love what we’re being taught. In my case, as I am self-taught, the fascination began in the lab, in those magic moments developing, when the image of something that I had already previously seen begins to appear on the paper. Later, from that initial interest, two determining events occurred in my life as a photographer: the two exhibitions which I saw in Madrid in 1981. One was the exhibition by August Sander at the German Institute, and when I saw the work of this photographer, I was absolutely sure about one thing…. What was I sure about…? It’s difficult to verbalise but, generalising a great deal, I can tell you that there I understood the power of photography. Those tramps photographed by Sander, the German businessmen, seeing the faces of those men I understood German society of the time and I was absolutely sure at that moment of the power of an intentioned eye, and that photography also participates in what we commonly understand as a work of art.

 

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*

p.s. Hey. ** Conrad, Hey, Conrad! It sounds like you’re enjoying Paris’s openness as much as I am. Well, I guess except for the aquarium job. Thanks for the open invite. I might just take you up on that. I definitely want to hit up the Kiarostami retrospective soon. I went to the opening of the Pinault Collection yesterday. The building is amazing, and the show up right now isn’t bad. There are a lot of great David Hammons pieces, for instance. Enjoy everything. Let’s go see some art or something. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. Yeah, such great novel. I … don’t think I’ve read that Qiu Miaojin book, no. Huh. I’ll find it. Thanks a bunch. ** Tosh Berman, Oops! I’ll trade that bogus photo for a real one. Thanks for letting me know. Obviously agree about Dazai, and amazing that you made that pilgrimage. Thanks, pal. I hope everything’s hunky dory in your world. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s worth your time. Whoa, Play Therapy is almost back. That’s like the clarion call for the pandemic’s end right there. Can’t wait. ** Misanthrope, The more cavernous the better, obvs. That David is just a 24/7 three alarm fire. My weekend should be pretty all right, thanks, and make yours pay. ** Sypha, Hi. Huh, I have no idea why the Dazai got dropped from that version of my faves list. I don’t remember doing that. Maybe some Dazai naysayer at Harper Perennial secretly lopped it off. ** Dominik, Yeah. I guess because the full reopening is going to be staggered, at least here, the upgrades will be exciting for a while. It was sad that ‘Closer’ film didn’t work out, or at least that the soundtrack didn’t. Oh, no, I fear your yesterday love’s experience mirrors your own. Ouch. Dare I hope you have the weekend free to use your eyeballs however you most desire? Love like H .. A .. U .. S .. U, G. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. It’s a swell book. Really liked your interview! Definitely gonna read his stuff. Thank you a lot for that. Hope your weekend is a sweetie. ** Steve Erickson, People I know either seem to love or hate ‘D,B’. No, nothing like Screen Slate here unfortunately. You just end up knowing the viable venues and checking their schedules. Writing negative reviews is so much fun. I almost miss doing that. Enjoy. ** David Ehrenstein, Hm. I guess showing Markopoulos’s wishes respect is understandable? ** Gus Cali Girls, Hi, Gus. The thanks are entirely mine. New music would be wonderful, obviously. And fiction! I like both of those premises and find them unimaginable, which is the best, need I say. Things are definitely, tenably and deliciously better here as of last Wednesday, for sure. Enjoy the hell out of your version. Great weekend to you. ** Okay. This weekend is given over to the Spanish photographer Alberto García-Alix because I thought you guys, or a solid portion of you guys at least, would enjoy the show. That’s the hope, and here’s hoping. See you on Monday.