José Guerrero. Concerning Landscape

For the past twenty years, the work of José Guerrero (Granada, 1979) has explored the landscape as an active entity with a living, dynamic identity in which cultures and the predisposition of the collective imagination intersect. For José Guerrero, as for many artists of his generation, photographing a territory, a landscape, or a place means not only representing it but also evoking the relationships of proximity, the alterations, solidarities and tensions inscribed within them, thus banishing the notion of landscape as something non-artificial and external to us.

His work is meticulously organised into series focused on places with great iconographic and historical significance (La Mancha, Carrara, Sierra Nevada, the Thames…), based on the assumption that it is the viewer’s own experience that shapes the narrative. The cultural memory of the viewer, combined with the photographer’s meaningful use of light, colour and atmosphere, ultimately constructs a poetic reading -rich with meaning- of the space.

This exhibition spans over 20 years of his career to date, drawing from the extensive body of his work in the Fundación MAPFRE Collections, along with loans from various institutions generously provided. The journey is arranged as a narrative itinerary guided by various threads, weaving together series and themes that unfold and refold endlessly: from representation to experimentation, from light to darkness, from transparency to opacity, and from documentary to abstraction.

Curator: Marta Gili