Chema Madoz: Visual metaphors

Last year I visited the exhibition entitled "Chema Madoz" 2000-2005. Madoz is a point of reference in Spain's contemporany art scene because of his unique way of interpreting art trough photography and his searching of visual poetry.

This artist manipulates the objects with studied delicacy. He modifies the objects looking for a balance between the essence of things and their latent significance.

Madoz is a incredible and fascinating collector of ideas that he photographes in black and white. This artist, with his poetic vision provides us with a window to better understand the world around us. As Confucious says: "Everyting has its beauty, but not everyone can see it".

Madoz uses the objecs and his graphic representation as if they were words froma very clear vocabulary. Madoz worked with Joan Brossa on a book (Fotopoemario), and Madoz's work has also been compared to the visual poems of this catalan poet.

The black-and-white format lends a melancholy distante to his work. The scale of greys turns things into shadows. The work with shadows allows the artist to obtain a plastic elegance in his photographs. Chema Madoz works on the delicate border existing between the real and the imaginary. In his works he proposes to us a split between whats exits and what is possible. As usually happen in the plastic arts, what is intellectual in Madoz's work is precisely what is abstract. Madoz has produced images with such a clear surrealist content, that remember the work of Magritte.