Perdido II / Lugar II de la serie “En la niebla” [Lost II / Place II from the “In the Fog” series] (2010)
Lambda prints on Dibond, framed in a display case
167 × 125 cm (each)
BA Collection
Registration No.: 2010.176.2
In this work of classical reverberations, reminiscent of the Spanish Baroque, the main figure is a mountaineer studying a map, a man who is apparently trying to find his own location and his destination in the depiction of the landscape. At his side, a mountain landscape seems to be perfectly aligned with the first photo. In the diptych with both images, the cloud surrounding the figure on the left contrasts with the light streaming on to the ‘found’ landscape, with clear biblical references to the revelation phenomenon.
Roberto Aguirrezabala thus brings a theme with spiritual and religious connotations to the present, which he ladens with moral references from a formal secularism that is questioned by the very idea, that of the meeting; the finding. We could basically conclude that Aguirrezabala changes prayer for guidance in these two images.
The scenes from the ‘En la niebla’ [In the Cloud] series are recreated with artificial smoke and light (electronic flashes with portable generators), which visually intensify and charged the photographs with an impenetrable, gloomy atmosphere, whose intention is to explore the use of light, by observing its expressive power and the dictate of its presence in the scene.
Aguirrezabala questions the phenomenon of light as a means of revelation, turning that idea into the cornerstone of the series to which these images belong. Their reading does not end there. Quite the contrary. This project seems to also embrace the poetics of the German Romantic landscape artists. In a manner of speaking, when we look at this composition, we are contemplating the sublime unknown, just like “the walker on the sea of clouds”.