Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation

ACCIÓN!MAD12 - ACCIÓN!MAD18

Photography Abel Loureda
Start date
End date
Timetable
Fridays from 5 to 8pm. Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from noon to 8pm
Price
Free entrance
Category
Venue
Naves Matadero
Nave 10. Hall
Institution
This exhibition brings together more than fifty images of some of the moments that have occurred in the last seven editions of Acción!MAD.
Photography has always been one of the most widely used means of recording performance art, in order to bear witness to the fact that an ephemeral action really did happen, and to leave a footprint that goes beyond the memory of the audience who attended it. National and international artists, men and women, the young and the not so young, the well-established and the up-and-coming. There is room for them all in this exhibition that exemplifies how diverse and plural Acción!MAD really is.

Abel Loureda, an artist and author of all the photographs, explains: “When you’re taking action shots you have to be quick, you need to develop a sixth sense, a kind of ‘arachnid sense’ that warns you that something important is going to happen. That's why sometimes the quality of the photo is maybe not what you’d want (it may be slightly out of focus, under or over exposed, the framing may not be all that great...), but its purpose is not to be a work of art per se, rather to reproduce the artistic piece that is the action. The action must always take precedence over the photograph. What matters is what is happening. Discretion is a photographer's best virtue: to go unnoticed, to be as silent as possible, not to disturb, not to use flash even if the light is not the best. To try to be as neutral as possible and not lose sight of the objective of the work which is nothing more than documenting what is happening, although this does not mean that you have to forsake the beauty of an image or a riskier composition.”

Instinctively, the photographer always leaves his or her mark, their own way of understanding the art of action. That is particularly so in the case of Abel Loureda, given that he is also an action artist.

 
ACCIÓN!MAD12 - ACCIÓN!MAD18