Until 28 May, Bildhalle in Amsterdam is presenting an exhibition by the Spanish artist duo Albarrán Cabrera. The exhibition 'Playing with the Light of the Universe' is their very first exhibition in the Netherlands and takes its title from a poem by the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Anna Cabrera & Ángel Albarrán have been collaborators for over twenty-five years now. Their practice is characterised by the ways in which they reinterpret reality. The symbiotic duo uses photography as a means of conveying complex subjects without the use of words. Albarrán Cabrera: “We feel that photography can help the viewers to understand concepts difficult to understand in other way. A set of images makes the viewer to be in the same wavelength as we are.” The resulting poetic photographs highlight the beauty, the sublime and the magic of the world around us. Japan in particular has been an important source of inspiration for the artist duo.
Albarrán and Cabrera feel that taking a photo is something that has to be experienced in the moment; thinking about the end product starts at a later stage. That process only begins in the darkroom, where they experiment with various techniques including Cyanotype, Platinum, Palladium, Silver Gelatin and materials such as pigment, Japanese paper, gold leaf and even tea. It results in hand-printed photographs in small editions that are nevertheless all unique. Albarrán Cabrera: “The most important thing is not to try to find a photo but to try to find a feeling. It's when you feel in a mood: you don’t care about what you’re shooting. You’re in a connection with what you have in your camera. You need to forget what you want to photograph.”
The duo is particularly intrigued by the individual and subjective experience of their images and the ways in which personal memories play a role in that. Albarrán Cabrera: “We are particularly interested in memories. We want to play with the memories of the viewer to construct a representation inside their minds. Of course we will never know what the final result will be, because any person has different memories and has grown up in different cultures and environments. Our images will only be the bare bones of this mental construction.”
The work of Albarrán Cabrera has been included in the collections of Hermès, the Goetz Collection, The German Bundestag`s Art Collection, Banco de Santander and De Nederlandsche Bank.