Albarrán Cabrera
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#123 from the series This is you here, printed 2018
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 1/4 x 6 7/8 in. (26 x 17.5 cm)
Edition 13/20
The artists combine found photographs with their own artworks to raise questions about the unreliability of memory and the ways our memory skews, distorts, and reinvents our lived experience over time. The figures’ identities are often partially obscured.
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#699 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2018, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition 4/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#227 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2013
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 1/4 x 5 3/4 in. (26 x 14.5 cm)
Edition of 20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#50 from the series This is you here, printed 2018
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition 2/5
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#143 from the series This is you here, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 3/5 x 7 1/8 in. (27 x 18 cm)
Edition 10/20
...If we are something, we are our past, aren’t we? Our past is not what can be recorded in a biography or in the newspapers. Our past is our memory. That memory can be hidden or inaccurate—it doesn’t matter. It’s there, isn’t it? It can be a lie but that lie becomes part of our memory, part of us."
- Jorge Luis Borges
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#252 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2013, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition 7/20
“In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour…”
― Egon Schiele, From his letter to Anton Peschka, 1910
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#147 from the series This is you here, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 1/4 x 6 5/8 in. (26 x 17 cm)
Edition 3/20
Playing with the juxtaposition of atemporal landscapes and anonymous portraits. The shadows of dawn or sunset animate the speculation. They unfold open-ended narratives in the brain of the viewer and let him total freedom to find the relation between the portrait and the space.
"I think I exist," he said wearily. "I am conscious of my own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously."
George Orwell, 1984
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#91 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2012, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
4 x 5 3/4 in. (10 x 14.5 cm)
Edition 11/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#444 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2016, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
6 5/8 x 10 1/4 in. (17 x 26 cm)
Edition 5/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#761 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2018, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 1/4 x 6 5/8 in. (26 x 17 cm)
Edition 2/20
#624 from The Mouth of Krishna, La Palma, 2017
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition 4/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#236 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2014, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 1/3 in. (25 x 16 cm)
Edition 2/20
“We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. Here’s a little outsider information, and you can wait for it to be confirmed. A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.” ― Richard Powers, The Overstory
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#159 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2013, printed 2018
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
6 5/8 x 9 7/8 in. (17 x 25 cm)
Edition 2/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#860 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 1/4 x 6 5/8 in. (26 x 17 cm)
Edition 2/20
'I want to invite you to come for a stroll in the menagerie,' I said, feeling pretty uncomfortable.
'But it's too early,' she replied. 'It isn't five o'clock yet. I never get up before ten.'
'It's lovely out,' I added.
"Oh, all right, if you insist.'
We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”
―Leonora Carrington, "The Royal Summons"
#532 from The Mouth of Krishna, 2016
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
7 1/16 x 9 3/8 in. (18 x 24 cm)
Edition 11/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#804 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
10 5/8 x 7 1/8 in. (27 x 18 cm)
Edition 2/20
"Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to and things go from bad to worse. Darkness overcomes you; nobody understands; the world is a deaf machine...
Then all your trouble comes at once. Wonderful things are passing you by. Terrible fates are inevitable...
But suddenly there it is right in front of you bright and vivid quietly waiting just as you imagined it would be."
-Shaun tan, "The red tree"
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#853 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2019, printed 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
6 5/8 x 10 1/4 in. (17 x 26 cm)
Edition 5/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#852 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition of 20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#738 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2019
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
9 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (25 x 17 cm)
Edition 7/20
Albarrán Cabrera (b. 1969, Spain)
#313 from the series The Mouth of Krishna, 2016
Pigments, Japanese gampi paper, and gold leaf
6 5/8 in. x 10 1/4 in. (26 x 17 cm)
Edition 4/20
…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
Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Albarrán Cabrera: There was never a time when we didn’t exist, our 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.
Our 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).
Please direct all inquiries to info@nailyaalexandergallery.com.