Juegos Reunidos

Prats Nogueras Blanchard is pleased to present Juegos Reunidos , an exhibition of photographs by Chema Madoz and poem-objets by Joan Brossa, bringing their work together for the first time.

REUNITED GAMES. CORRESPONDENCE GAMES Maria Canelles Trabal. Barcelona, November 2024

When novelist and playwright Jordi Coca (Barcelona, 1947) asks Joan Brossa what a poem is, he answers: “a concentration of language and an essay of correspondences.” Both Joan Brossa and Chema Madoz seem to have a way of looking at and representing reality that insists on generating more and more correspondences, on inventing new ones. Forcing them, if necessary. As if the relationship between the individual and nature (the reality that surrounds us) is truly the center of their research, and that the most fruitful way they have to delve into this relationship is by showing that everything is interconnected and that, therefore, any element of reality (no matter how insignificant it may be -a shoe, a lightbulb, a chess piece) has a meaningful correspondence in the cosmos. The idea that hovers above Brossa and Madoz’s objects is that of a unified world in which anything can be transformed into anything else. Therefore, the summary of analogies, which is their object-based work, can be seen as an exercise in cataloging reality, understood as objective reality as well as that reality which is only visible through poetic eyes. Rocks, pebbles, trees, rain, waterdrops, or the moon have their equivalents in objects from everyday life. In things.

Transformation, then, an idea that informs all of Brossa’s poetics, is the main mechanism in Brossa and Madoz’s creative process. However, this metamorphosis is not only generated through the arrangement of objects, but specifically through the poetic gaze. Antonio Monegal defines this mechanism very well referring to Brossa’s objects, but this quote, in my opinion, is perfectly applicable to Chema Madoz:

"Brossa [and Madoz] does not only invoke what the thing is, but what the thing means. The manipulations, combinations and transformations to which he subjects the objects constitute an exercise of poiesis, that is, of construction, of fabrication, equivalent to the composition of a statement, which is based both on the vast universe of analogies and on the circulation and exchange of meanings derived from this analogical system".

An analogical system, as we said, which is nothing more than a summary of correlations between elements in the cosmos, where the individual stands in the middle (the poet, the photographer, the observer), relating to reality and its possibilities of being represented. We can thus say that, although Madoz’s objects and Brossa’s work operate on different spheres (poetry, photography, the object in a case or the publication), the mechanism of creation originates from the poetic field. Therefore, Madoz does not employ a visual poetry to make his images lyrical or evocative, but because his work is based on the practice of poiesis .

As familiar objects appear unusual (a high-heeled shoe that becomes a pipe, a square wheel), the spectator is unsettled. This strangeness is uncomfortable because it questions rather than instructs, and is part of the game of making the everyday seem unfamiliar. And defamiliarization (through manipulation, isolation or irony) is one of the characteristic features of poetry. Because poetry attacks the foundations of language (or exposes them) by subverting its function, which is to communicate. Ultimately, what poetry does is highlight the gaps, contradictions, and limitations of language itself. In a way, the objects represented in Madoz’s photographs, or imprisoned within Brossa’s display cases function in the same way as poetry, since they directly subvert the use of the everyday object: they are isolated and given an abstract character that disables them from their practical function as things, while at the same time granting them the ability to make the invisible visible, to, through unexpected similarities, generate the sensation of strangeness and, paradoxically, also of fullness.

What both Brossa and Madoz propose is the possibility of looking at the object (or language, and, by extension, the entire cosmos) as something new. They challenge us to look at the world with fresh eyes, or as if we were seeing it for the first time. This is why they shared an almost childlike naïveté to marvel, to plunge into mystery and to focus on the everyday long enough for it to become extraordinary. Through these games (juegos reunidos), it is therefore essential to suspend rational judgment and allow oneself to be captivated by surprise. The poet plays, the photographer plays and the viewer plays.

In this exhibition, the correspondences go beyond the works themselves, generating new ones through associations between photographs and objects that highlight the multiple points of connection between the two artists. Views of impossible landscapes, blinded or framed; attempts to capture or master the squaring of the circle, of the stars, of the rocks, or of the rain; useless, fragmented, absurd tools; and, above all, games of chance. In short, a collection of games brought together with clear rules and, therefore, infinite possibilities.

But we are not literally talking about games, but about works of art that, in addition, are placed within a specific context. Both Brossa and Madoz work within the conceptual realm of ideas, yet they approach objects in the way of handcraft to give them the identity of art works (of photographs, of poemas-objeto). Aware of the artistic mechanisms inherited from the avant-garde movements, both provide a framework, a context to the object that ultimately transforms it into a poem or photograph. Ortega y Gasset claims that the frame and the painting need each other, noting that “a painting without a frame has the air of a plundered and naked man.” Brossa and Madoz not only handle objects to generate these correlations, but, once they have them, they frame the analogy in order to create a work. One does so with a display case, a signature, and an edition (now it is no longer an object or a poem, but a series-produced artistic piece that enters a specific system); the other does so through a new objectual and plastic element: photography. A photograph that, furthermore, works in black and white, an element that adds a layer of distance intensifying the idea of reality within reality. Just as Magritte works with paintings within paintings.

The logical mindset would tell us that the legacy (both immaterial and material in this case) of Joan Brossa (a legacy that we wish to read as surprising, provocative, festive, popular and stimulating) would lead us to think that Chema Madoz, clearly from a later generation, takes the aesthetic principles of transformation and Brossian games and catapults them towards new places. But it has been explained many times that both artists (who collaborated in the book Fotopoemario , where one’s images nurture the metaphors of the other, and vice versa) did not meet until Brossa’s career was already consolidated and Madoz’s aesthetic identity was defined. Yet, all of this is a unique cosmos and the logic of correspondences also works between Madoz and Brossa and it is that, perhaps these two creators are part of the same poetic entity that allows them to create simultaneously, similar points of departure and arrival from the perplexity of mutual ignorance. In any case, before and after meeting, they share the same gaze that allows us to realize the infinite possibilities (many more than the simple linear reality) of languages and objects.

Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919 - 1998), poet, playwright and plastic artist, began his career in the 1940s, alongside Josep Vicenç Foix, Joan Miró and Joan Prats. Despite developing an intense activity from the beginning, it was not until 1970 that he began to be known from a literary point of view thanks to the publication of Poesia rasa and until 1986, when the first anthological exhibition, Joan Brossa o les paroles són les coses [Joan Brossa or Words Are Things], was inaugurated at the Fundació Miró. From that moment on, the poet became one of the leading figures in contemporary Catalan literature and art. Brossa was one of the founders of the magazine Dau Al Set , along with Ponç, Cuixart, Arnau Puig, Tàpies and Tharrats, and the author of an interdisciplinary oeuvre characterised by experimentation with language and the use of all kinds of techniques and styles. In 1960, invited by Joan Miró, he took part in the exhibition Poètes, peintres, sculpteurs at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, at the same time as he began to collaborate with Miró and Tàpies and, later, with artists such as Alfons Borrell, Chillida, José Niebla and Perejaume, among others. Internationally, he took part in important exhibitions such as the São Paulo Biennial in 1994 and the Venice Biennial in 1997. His solo exhibitions include the Musée d’Art Moderne de Céret and the Musée de Collioure in 1990; the Centre International de Poésie in Marseille; the Musée National Ce and at the Musée de Collioure in 1990; at the Centre International de Poésie in Marseille; at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 1991; at the Kunstmuseum Malmö, Sweden in 1993; at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico in 1998; at the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel and the Städtische Galerie in Göppingen in 1998, among others. After his death, in 2001 the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona dedicated an important anthological exhibition to him, and in 2017 the MACBA presented the exhibition Poesia Brossa .

Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) lives and works in Madrid. He is one of the greatest Spanish artists with national and international recognition in contemporary photography. In the early 1980s he studied art history at the Complutense University of Madrid while also studying photography at the Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen. He has received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2019), the Culture Prize of the Community of Madrid (2013), the National Photography Prize, the Higashikawa Prize of Japan, the PhotoEspaña Prize (2000) and the Kodak Prize (1991). He was the first living Spanish photographer to be the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1999, entitled Objects 1990-1999 , which included works from the 1990s. In recent years he has exhibited in museums and art centres such as Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid (2021), Fototeca Latinoamericana in Buenos Aires, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg, Centro Conde Duque, Madrid (2017), Museo Esteban Vicente, Segovia (2015), La Pedrera-Fundació Caixa Catalunya, Barcelona (2013), Netherland Photomuseum, Rotterdam, Hermitage Museum, Kazan, Russia, Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile (2011); Tecla Sala, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (2008); CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2007); Fundación Telefónica, Madrid (2006), among others. His work is currently on display in the exhibition La naturaleza de las cosas in the Pabellón Villanueva of the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid. Chema Madoz has received the Honorary Photography Award from the Enaire Foundation and is currently presenting an anthological exhibition at the Naves de Gamazo Art Centre in Santander.

Exhibition design: Emiliana Design Studio

We would like to thank Vicenç Altaió, Angustias Freijo, Wilfredo Prieto, Fuensanta Saula, José María Sicilia and Andrea Tschechow for their collaboration.