Alberto García-Alix: The Irreducibles

 

Alberto García-Alix is a humanist who runs against the grain, ill at ease by nature. His portraits bear testimony to a life on the street, in the depths of the city, where colours are creeds and honor counts more than the law, where the individual still figures as the mainstay of the group, joining and bonding with others of like temperament sworn to be true to themselves. Presenting himself in this way, as an ontological affirmation, his resistance always comes as a living proclamation. Such is the stuff of which Alberto’s photographic works are made.

 

Over forty years since his first photographs, like a tree clinging to the edge of an abyss, barely anchored with roots hanging in the air, absurdly resistant and stubborn, Alberto lithely adjusts his bodily stance to offset his imbalance. He has to maintain the tension, to keep shooting.

 

With subversive fervor, ever hostile to order, García-Alix feeds dissent with each portrait, flouting authority and scorning good manners. Unafraid of whatever it costs, fearing only not getting on with living. This is what makes everything happen. As Augustín García Calvo has said: “… being consists in self-possession, possessing is being, and so that I be I, my own being has to be all.”

 

Alberto García-Alix does not portray a certain way of living, but rather certainty – just what he sees, what grabs him. With each portrait, he lets us partake in another life and share a sense of intimacy. Inevitably, this comes with a sense of modesty. He returns us to ourselves: we feel the demands, not denial, of these photographs from the skin inward. Such are the workings of his humanism.

 

This exhibition sums up part of Alberto’s life and links it with those of others. Here are the people who have stayed beside him, but also those who have gone. Men and women who are truly the subjects and motives of these photographs – subjects because life speaks through them, motives because without them García-Alix would have been someone else.

 

Forty years as forty confirmations of being, like forty nails and forty roses, each as vivid as if it were the last but also the first. Above all, the first.

 

 Gonzalo Golpe

 

Alberto García-Alix (1956) is a Spanish photographer residing in Madrid. Picking up photography in the late 70s, he had his first individual exhibitions in Madrid and London in the 80s. He is one of the leading figures of the cultural movement La Movida Madrileña, leaving behind well-known and powerful images of the movement's youth. Other members include his friends, now renowned personalities in different fields: Pedro Almodóvar, Rossy de Palma, Emma Suárez, Camarón de la Isla and many others.

 

During the first edition of PhotoEspaña in 1998, García-Alix showcased a retrospective exhibition which received great public and critical acclaim. Between 2003 and 2006, he lived in Paris where he created a video trilogy alternating photographic and filmed images that represents the incursion of the artist in the video format, a medium which he continues to develop. In 2009, García-Alix presented a retrospective at the National Museum of Reina Sofia Art Center, Ullens Center in Beijing and the Maison de la Photographie in Moscow, and later exhibited at the Maison Européene de la Photographie in Paris, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leon and the Tabacalera Art Promotion in Madrid. His most recent project is Fierce Expressionism, a collection of unpublished photographs, taken over the last years, which has been exhibited in 2018 in Uruguay, Argentina and Dominican Republic, and in 2019 in Moscow. He also works as a publisher and has founded the cultural magazine El Canto de la Creación (1989–1997) and co-founded the publishing house Cabeza de Chorlito, which has published some of his most recent creations: Paradise of the believers (2011); Diaporamas (2012); MOTO (2015), Motorcycle Family Circus nº1, nº2 and nº3  (2016, 2018, 2021) and Nomad Archive (2023).

 

Alberto García-Alix received the National Photography Prize in 1999 and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2019, both awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. His work can be found in collections such as the National Museum of Art Reina Sofía (Spain), Fonds Nationales d’Art Contemporain (France) and Deutsche Börse (Germany), among others. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alberto García-Alix: Los Irreductibles

 

“Qué vive aquel?, decid: su vida sólo, no más la vida suya.

Conque vida, vida, si no es la de él, no es nada;

y la vida toda sólo consiste en ser la de él,

en un saber seguro que es él el que la vive.”

A. G. C.

 

Alberto García Alix (1956) es un humanista a contrapelo, incómodo en su propia especie. Sus retratos construyen un testimonio de una vida en el asfalto, en lo profundo de la urbe.

 

Allí donde los colores son lemas y el honor obliga más que la ley, el individuo sigue siendo el sostén del grupo, quien se une y enlaza con otros seres de su condición bajo un contrato: ser fiel a sí mismos. La resistencia cuando se presenta de esta manera, como una afirmación ontológica, es siempre una proclama de vida: ésta es la materia fotográfica con la que Alberto ha construido su obra.

 

Más de 40 años después de sus primeras fotos, a la manera del árbol colgante aferrado al borde del abismo, con las raíces al aire, anclado apenas, resistente y terco hasta el absurdo, Alberto corrige ligeramente su cuerpo compensando el desplazamiento de su equilibrio: hay que mantener la tensión, seguir tirante.

 

Con el ánimo del subversivo, siempre hostil al orden, Alberto alimenta la disensión con cada retrato, disiente de la autoridad como disiente de las buenas costumbres. No hay miedo a pagar, hay miedo a no apurar lo que se vive. Y de eso va todo. Ya lo dejó dicho Agustín García Calvo: “(…) Pues ser consiste en poseerse, poseer es ser; y para que yo sea yo, ser mío ha de serlo todo”.

 

Alberto García Alix no retrata una cierta manera de vivir, sino la manera cierta, la única que ve, la que le prende. Con cada retrato nos permite precipitarnos en una vida ajena, sentir la intimidad que comparten. La sensación de pudor es tan inevitable como necesaria. Volvernos hacia nosotros, sentir estas fotografías de la piel hacia adentro como una reclamación, que no como una renuncia, es el modo en que opera su humanismo.

 

Esta muestra recoge parte de su vida y la conecta a la de otros. Aquí están los que permanecen a su lado, pero también los que se fueron. Hombres y mujeres que en estas fotografías son verdaderamente sujetos y motivos: sujetos, porque es a través de ellos que se enuncia la vida; motivos, porque sin ellos Alberto hubiera sido otro.

 

Cuarenta años como cuarenta confirmaciones del ser, como cuarenta clavos y cuarenta rosas, cada uno de ellos vivido como si fuese el último pero también el primero. Sobre todo, el primero.

 

Gonzalo Golpe

 

La exposición es organizada en colaboración con la Embajada de España en Liubliana, el Instituto Cervantes de Viena y el Instituto Cervantes de Liubliana.