NEW YORK, NY.- Nailya Alexander Gallery is presenting Albarrán Cabrera: There was never a time when we didn’t exist, the gallery's second solo show for the Barcelona-based artists Angel Albarrán (b. 1969, Barcelona) and Anna Cabrera (b. 1969, Sevilla), on view online Monday 1 June - Saturday 27 June 2020.
The exhibition celebrates the beauty and timelessness of nature, which connects all of us in a continuous cycle of renewal. For Albarrán Cabrera, a profound awareness of the natural world is integral to all aspects of existence; they write, “Being conscious of our surroundings isn’t just an important part of life — our surroundings and how we interpret them is life as we know it.” Drawing inspiration from a range of sources and philosophies, from William Blake and Jorge Luis Borges to Hinduism and Japanese thought, the artists use photography as a tool to explore the space between the real and the unreal, and between the past, present, and future. Above all, their concern is with time and memory, which they call "the leitmotif that runs through all our photographic work.” Their images evoke memories and fantasies in each viewer, and create a sense of eternity and tranquility through the representation of seemingly small or quotidian scenes: a bird balancing on a branch or a stone, the play of water and light through fir and cherry trees, or the peaceful, shimmering expanse of the sea.
The artists experiment with a range of processes, including platinum, palladium, cyanotype, and gelatin silver printing. The photographs in our exhibition highlight their innovative and distinctive method of printing on delicate, hand-made Japanese gampi paper, backed by a layer of gold leaf, which adds a luminous glow to each image and creates distinctive tones otherwise unachievable in traditional color printing.
This exhibition also contains many images from Albarrán Caberara’s new book Des Oiseaux, the latest edition of the collection of the same name published by Éditions Xavier Barral. The collection explores, through the vision of different artists, the powerful presence of birds in a world where they are now vulnerable, and includes books by Pentti Sammallahti, Graciela Iturbide, Michael Kenna, and other artists, and is scheduled for release in Fall 2020.
Albarrán Cabrera have produced prints for institutions including Fundació La Pedrera, Barcelona; Fundació Toni Catany, Mallorca; and the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid. Their work can be found in public and private collections around the world including Hermès, the Goetz Collection, Banco de Santander, and the Fundación de Ferrocarriles Españoles. The artists’ previous publications include Remembering the Future (RM Editorial, 2018) and Pequeñas Melodías (IIkki Editorial, 2018).
…Time unfolds all beings in the world, holy and unholy. Time shrinks them and expands them again. Time walks in all creatures, unaverted, impartial. Whatever beings there are in the past will be in the future, whatever are busy now, they are all the creatures of Time… — Mahabharata 1.1.188-190
