Adiós Madrid [Goodbye Madrid] (2000)
Digital print on paper
76.5 x 76.5 cm framed
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2000.18.1
At the end of the 20th century, Alejandro Arteche’s work was featured in a solo show, entitled ‘La ciudad no duerme’ [The City Does Not Sleep], at BilbaoArte. The artist drew on his multifaceted experience where music, design and photography entwined and embraced obvious stylistic dictates of rock culture. In fact, this print, Adiós Madrid [Goodbye Madrid] has now emerged as a cornerstone to depict a creative process closely linked to its time. Years that formed that backbone where – under the icon of a change of millennium – it could be glimpsed that the future awaiting us would end up being a perverse mix of the doomsday scenarios and predictions of Huxley and Orwell.
Gloom and awe converge in Adiós Madrid; a double opacity to delve into a future filled with omens and doubts. Arteche, who had already been exhibiting his work for ten years, included a third variable – blurring – to bolster that blinding sensation in the radical image of a posited Madrid. The result seems to avoid the portrayed scenario – a dystopian and millenarian landscape – to use movement to suggest a type of evanescence.
Alejandro Arteche (Bilbao, 1968) is a photographer, graphic designer and visual artist, known for his unique look at contemporary and urban culture. From his earliest work, he has combined portraits, urban scenes and stagings that capture everyday life from an almost documentary approach, and transforming the ordinary into visual poetry.