They don’t look like photographs, perhaps because as Pablo Crespi (Ávila, 1960) well warns in the title of his exhibition, ‘Nothing is what it seems’. The 33 photographs that the artist is showing until March 10 at the Pons Foundation headquarters have not been digitally manipulated, in the sense that Crespi has not removed, added or mixed the images in post-production. «I like to get the result in camera“, says. And yet, that light, that color, those textures sometimes do not seem real.
«I start from one reality to create a different one and I move in the world of abstraction”, this artist explains to ABC that although he was born in Ávila, he has lived in Madrid since he was two months old. For him, “the important thing is what the images represent, not what they are.”
Madrid
The images exhibited at number 138 Serrano Street are grouped around three major themes: ‘The movement’, the section that he has baptized as ‘Enchanted in the forest’ and ‘Watercolours’. In the first, it is not the object but the camera that moves for things to happen like the buildings grow, the tunnels are dyed green, or the wind is captured in the photograph. Crespi explains that it arose during the pandemic, when seeing his movements limited, he focused on the urban.
Watercolor II, Flying Flowers and Diademagua
‘Enchanted in the woods’ It describes that personal vision of the natural environment that the photographer has, his particular point of view of nature. “It’s a patient search for images that I find and they suggest something to me,” he says.
The artist, who already presented 23 works in his exhibition ‘Water’ in which this element was the creator of shapes, textures and colours, returns to explore in ‘watercolors‘ the ability of the surface of the water to become a canvas where refraction, reflections, the breakdown of light and the backgrounds ‘paint’ the photographs.
To surprise
«In the search for new images, I try to offer a different vision, that is something that you have never seen before. I try to ser original within the current photographic panorama and, ultimately, to surprise”, underlines Crespi.
Although it takes taking pictures “since forever” and at the age of 23 he showed for the first time in public 25 portraits with double exposures on the positive, starting from a Polaroid camera, he later developed his career as a television director. For four years, however, he has been focused on photography.
This is his second exhibition at the Pons Foundation, which was created in 2005 to return to society the 75 years of experience and accumulated knowledge of the Pons companies in their different areas of activity. As pointed out by the foundation itself, its objective is “to actively promote education in values related to the responsible promotion of new technologies; awareness, teaching and research in road safety and responsible mobility; the promotion of R+D+i, the defense and development of industrial and intellectual property and the determined support for the emerging values of art”.
In 2020, they began a new stage by taking advantage of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focused on ending poverty, guaranteeing a healthy life and promoting well-being for all, protecting the planet and improving life and future prospects. of all the people in the whole world.