Light and Shadows
Hard to resist an open invitation like the one proposed by the artist Juan Manuel McGrath in which he steals of what is permanent mutation an habitable place. Inhabitable not only from a body that fantastically lets itself fall, floats and submerges, but also from the mirage that it achieves with the loving register of the vagaries of the lights and the shadows. It is a small selection of images that is part of a larger collection, made up of pieces that even in their arrogant visuality summon other sensorial, tactile experiences and from the whole body. Invitation that interpellates through the textures, the humidity, the interstices and the surfaces in which we can wander as in a huge desert, in the space that fits in the persistent imprint of a leaf. McGrath creates universes from fragments; wholes summon us to reread and experience in other scales the polyphony of the natural world. For example, in close proximity to the texture and the whimsical patterns of leaves and water, one may think that it is submerged in the bottom of a dry sea. The possibilities evoked by the fine work of this visual artist promote very diverse aesthetic experiences and are hospitable to the visitor who lets himself be caught. For this to be possible, we must give ourselves a different and distant tempo from the contemporary visual saturation, which is the tempo of haste.
Ángela Godoy 2018
I use the camera as a link in a process of search of the direct experience of nature. Search in which the inner world inhabited by emotions and sensations are the very foundations of the tangible world. For this exercise, the post processing work is crucial to revisit the moment and reinterpret with the memory a moment of lucidity,of contemplation of the sublime aiming to awaken in the spectator sensations of that truth that glimpses fleetingly in moments of clarity. The photographies are in black and white to emphasize the tangibility of the elements, perceptible as images through light and shadows.
Juan Manuel McGrath 2018