On May 18th at 7:00 pm, the Davidoff Studios in Altos de Chavón will open the exhibition “East or West” with photographs by José M. Ramírez. The exhibition features the result of the artist’s residence from February to May of this year in the Cultural Foundation Altos de Chavón Artists in Residence program. The exhibition, which will be open to the public until June 18th, focuses on Ramírez’s travels through the national territory, exploring the essential aspects of life on the island from a territorial point of view. These pieces are objects of reflection and interpretation. They are analog photographs in black and white, panoramic format and printed on canvas.
Regarding the work of Ramírez, Anne Louyot says:
“The horizon is not a physical reality, but a spatial reference, the circular range of visual perception. It is where the gaze goes to for location, orientation, and projection. It is also a chimeric precipice, the emblem of the unknown, of the inaccessible, though passionately desired. And finally is the metaphorical transition between real and possible, vision and representation.
Thanks to the horizon, painters and photographers built the modern relationship with landscapes, structured by perspective. They made this fictional line a pictorial reality that gave to its images stability and fullness and turned them into testimonies of the implicitly divine beauty of nature.
José M. Ramírez’s photographs seem, at first glance, to possess this same subliminal character of the landscape by anchoring it to the horizon. The use of ancient techniques, with long exposure times and the subtle melancholy of the composition, can deceive us, lead us to remain on the surface of these beautiful variations of lines and grays. But when you look at them more closely, there are doubts. What does the horizon teach us? The impossibility of perceiving the world in its integrity? Or our inability to really look at it? Reconnect with an eternal nature? Or realizing the damage we did to it? The revelation of a superior balance? Or the consciousness of fractures inherent in human destiny?
In the images of José M. Ramírez, the horizon is no longer an abstract line, but a complex thickness that the photographer invites us to explore. There, in the distance, the light reveals something real that arouses our attention and appeals to our responsibility. It is up to us, spectators, to deepen the image, to recognize in it the paradoxes of the world and to place ourselves in the face of its natural, social or political contradictions. The horizons of José M. Ramírez ask us to leave the comfort of our location and start vibrating our interior compass. To imagine other horizons. Between East and West.”
Don’t miss the opportunity to meet the artist and make your own interpretation of each of these pieces. The invitation is for Thursday, May 18th at 7:00 pm in the Davidoff Studios, Altos de Chavón.
East or West by Photographs by José M. Ramírez
When: May 18th, 2017 7pm
Where: Davidoff Art Studios, Altos de Chavón
Cost: Free
Open to the public until June 18th
*Information contributed by Chavón School of Design
Spanish
