An Ethereal Glow

An Ethereal Glow
The enigmatic photographs of Albarrán Cabrera

The choice of materials involved and the reason for their implementation in any artwork should always consider both the structural and conceptual purposes for inclusion. Materiality, if one is to create an intimate, singular object, should be as heavily considered in a photographic print as any sculpture.

Albarrán Cabrera (Spanish, b. 1969), a collaborative duo based in Barcelona, use gold leaf in their photographs, not for simple decoration or nostalgic flamboyance, but rather its unique ability for reflective illumination and contemplative significance. “Not mere extravagance” as Jun'ichirō Tanizaki wrote in his 1933 essay on Japanese aesthetics In Praise of Shadows, in which he espoused the elegant use of gold leaf for illumination in the shadowy corners of pre-electricity rural homes. The essay’s expression of gold as an almost mystical medium of luminance seems apt to Albarràn Cabrera’s use of it as a printing substrate for its ability to produce “an ethereal glow” from beneath the thin layer of Japanese gampi paper that bears their color photographs.

Printmaking, the creation of tactile and precious photo-objects, is always paramount for the artists. This dedication to craftsmanship and the philosophies explored are what continually draw me to Albarrán Cabrera’s enigmatic work as it has had such a profound effect on the way I view the world afterward. Shouldn’t art always serve this purpose?

- Douglas Marshall
A few notes notes on the exhibition...
Text excerpts from Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's essay, published in English by Leet's Island Books, are inserted throughout the exhibition as a philosophical context.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Albarrán Cabrera are the photographers Angel Albarrán (b.1969, Barcelona) and Anna Cabrera (b. 1969, Sevilla) and have worked collaboratively as art photographers since 1996. A rich inner philosophy about memory and experience — and an alchemical curiosity for photographic printmaking — guide their aesthetic practice. Influenced by both occidental and oriental thinkers and artists, their photographs question our assumptions of time, place and identity in order to stimulate a new understanding of one’s own experience and perception. For the artists, “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.”

The question running like a thread throughout their work is how images trigger individual memories in the viewer. "We are particularly interested in memories. Our aim is to play with viewers’ memories and to construct a representation inside their minds. Our images are the bare bones of this mental construction."

Albarran Cabrera's photographs have been exhibited in galleries and photo fairs in Spain, Japan, Switzerland, USA, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Lebanon, and Italy. Private collections and institutions that house their photographs include Hermès, Goetz Collection, Banco de Santander and De Nederlandsche Bank among others. They have also produced photographic prints for institutions such as Fundació La Pedrera, Barcelona; Fundació Toni Catany, Mallorca; Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid; FotoColectania, Barcelona; the Photographic Archive, Barcelona. They have collaborated with publishers such as Adelphi Edizioni, Mondadori Libri, Penguin Random House, Diogenes Verlag, RM Verlag and Ediciones Atalanta and companies/institutions such as La Monnaie De Munt, -Belgium's federal opera house.
Click on any images for a larger view, work details and pricing information.
Early Work
Silver gelatin, cyanotype and platinum-palladium prints

Known widely for their signature process of color printing on Japanese gampi paper with gold leaf, the reflective work of Alabrrán Cabrera arises from a foundation of analog processes made in the wet darkroom. As master printers for many celebrated photographers, the duo specialized in producing platinum-palladium editions and portfolios while developing and eventually focusing on their own creative practice. The selection of early prints shown here displays the origins of their compositional explorations using negative space, askew orientations, and cosmic abstraction which continue to be implemented in later works.
The Mouth of Krishna & This is you (here)
Pigment prints on gampi paper over gold leaf

JAPANESE PAPER GIVES US A CERTAIN FEELING OF WARMTH, OF CALM AND REPOSE... WESTERN PAPER TURNS AWAY THE LIGHT, WHILE OUR PAPER SEEMS TO TAKE IT IN, TO ENVELOP IT GENTLY, LIKE THE SOFT SURFACE OF A FIRST SNOWFALL. - J. Tanizaki

In order to bridge the tactile nature of their earlier work as black-and-white printmakers, Albarrán Cabrera began implementing the use of fibrous and semi-translucent Japanese gampi paper for a new direction into color work as featured in their ongoing portfolios The Mouth of Krishna and This is you (here). The sub-layering of gold leaf that followed was inspired by a range of art-historical origins from Russian Orthodox Iconography and Byzantine painting to, more clearly, Japanese Byōbu folding screens and printmaking techniques. The metallic layer is never overtly apparent, only subtly glowing through the photograph's highlights and giving the print an overall iridescent warmth, shifting in intensity as one passes by.
surely you have seen, in the darkness of the innermost rooms of these huge buildings, to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast into the enveloping darkness.
You walk past, turning to look again, and yet again; and as you move away the golden surface of the paper glows ever more deeply, changing not in a flash, but growing slowly, steadily brighter, like color rising in the face of a giant.
OR AGAIN YOU MAY FIND THAT THE GOLD DUST OF THE BACKGROUND, WHICH UNTIL THAT MOMENT HAD ONLY A DULL, SLEPY LUSTER, WILL, AS YOU MOVE PAST, SUDDENLY GLEAM FORTH AS IF IT HAD BURST INTO FLAME.
KAIROS
Pigment prints on gampi paper over gold leaf

In Kairos, which seeks to photographically represent the metaphysical idea of “the eternal present”, the use and revealing of gold leaf serve a conceptual purpose grounded in Eastern philosophy. The phantom idea of “Now” is represented by delicately removing a section of the image surface revealing an imperfect strip of gold, or through an amorphous space of light between conjoined negatives separating two subsequent exposures of a scene (past and future) taken moments apart.
“The perception of this line, like the fact of ‘seeing the present’, can be more or less obvious, but the less visible it is, the further from the truth our reality is.”
NYX

PLATINUM-PALLADIUM PRINTS ON GAMPI PAPER OVER GOLD LEAF

The artists’ most recent and abstract series, Nyx, displays the evolution of an earlier focus on platinum-palladium printing, this time on the combined layers of gampi and gold leaf. The series' concepts and materials reference the Greek creation myth of the blackbird and the golden cosmic egg. The prints require a laborious commitment of trial and error to achieve final execution as each sheet of fine gampi is hand-coated before a contact print is made. Throughout the duo’s oeuvre, the inventive use of materials, content, and compositions arise from a literary and historical wellspring, subtly applied with humble intent.
Such is our way of thinking-we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

- Jun'ichirō tanizaki
ARTIST INTERVIEW BY LENSCULTURE
Artist Interview - July 2020

Douglas Marshall: “An Ethereal Glow” comes from Jun-ichirō Tanizaki’s text referenced throughout the exhibition. As Western artists, how did you first get interested in or introduced to Japanese aesthetics?

Albarrán Cabrera: Like any particular event, this interest was born into us as the culmination of a chain of seeming coincidences. We have been fascinated by Asian cinema for a long time. We were introduced to it thanks to BAFF (Barcelona Asian Film Festival). It was a great festival that started some 20 years ago and that nowadays has changed its format a bit. We discovered the Asian reality through the cinema and we fell in love with Eastern culture. We believe that to understand any culture you must understand the language so we started to study Chinese Mandarin. We discovered that the characters were not so difficult, the grammar is not so complex, but trying to pronounce it correctly was nearly impossible for us. Thus, we took up Japanese: pronunciation is quite easy for Spaniards, the mixture of Kanjis, katakana and hiragana characters is crazy and the grammar is incredibly complex, but we love it! Learning the language, reading about Japanese religion, philosophy, aesthetics and finally visiting the country year after year, created a link between Japan and us so strong that now this culture is deeply embedded in our lives.

DM: Many of your early works have an apparent celestial feel like you are seeing “a World in a Grain of Sand”. Is this intentional, and if so, to what ends?

AC: One of the main ideas in our series The Mouth of Krishna is to explain that everything you can find in the universe is similar because we all share the same origin. A human being has the same kind of atoms that a rock has, or quoting Carl Sagan’s words: “Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.” This idea is recurrent and as has been expressed before by Doris Lessing, Harlow Shapley, Albert Durrant Watson and Mahmoud Shabestari to name a few.
DM: Memory is a continual theme throughout your work, which often feels ephemeral or timeless. Do you hope to provoke imagined memories in the viewer with your photographs?

AC: Memories define what we are. When we say “each person is different” what it means is that each person has different memories. So, when someone “reacts” to an image they are in fact recreating some of their memories triggering in the process specific feelings. That is also why it is so difficult to explain something through photography. A photo is three-dimensional but flat -it’s not a sculpture-; it freezes time, but it does not unwrap in time like the cinema; you need the help of your imagination to interpret a photo but to interpret a novel your imagination must work even harder. So, in short, the relation between the photographer and the viewer is as the title of this exhibition: ethereal. But at the same time, it is true that these constraints make you strive for the best way to make yourself understood.
DM: Many of your images feature askew or inverted visual orientations. Is there an art historical reference or conceptual significance for this?

AC: It is a way to make the viewer understand that their reality is shaped by the way the senses process the stimuli. We see something in its "correct” position because we look at it in that position. If you look “differently”, you will “see” different things. In Japan, there is a place called Amanohashidate. It is an ancient pine forest that stretches across the sea. A peculiar custom to observe Amanohashidate is the mata-nozoki: leaning forward to see the landscape upside down through your legs. This inverts heaven and earth by turning the sandbank that winds through the water into a dragon that flies across the sky (known as hiryūkan, or "sight of flying dragon"

DM: Shadows and silhouettes are prominent throughout your work, especially the portfolios This is you (here) and NYX. What role do shadows play in your work? Was their use influenced by the writings of Tanizaki, C.G. Jung, or others?

AC: The role is to create mystery. As a viewer we are not much interested in looking at an obvious reality. If you look at a photograph where everything is clearly shown, there is no room for your imagination to play with that image and add your memories and your inner world to it. We love when in an image there is enough room to allow the viewer to enrich it with their memories, fears and questions. When that happens a momentary complicity between the photographer and the viewer is created. Tanizaki, Jung and other authors give us the guidelines about how to develop this mystery.
DM: You’ve compared the act of photographing with shodō (calligraphy) in that it requires one’s mindful attention to feelings in the moment. Do you feel this idea extends into the darkroom?

AC: The darkroom is different. It’s a more physical experience for us. In the darkroom you physically need to transform an idea, which sometimes is something that you cannot explain with words in an object. It is the object that you’re creating what will give you the explanation that you were looking for. This creation process requires concentration and at the same time, it is a sensory experience. Smell, sight or sound are pretty active when you’re working in the lab. Taste would also be very useful, but that’s the only sense that it is better to avoid in the darkroom!
DM: You speak about “giving people objects” as photographic prints. How do you balance the importance of image making versus object making in your practice?

AC: Well, it’s difficult, or at least for us. We cannot interlink days shooting with days working in the darkroom. To shoot, we need to be in a particular mood which is hard to get in the society and times we are living in. While in that mood, we don’t want to “break it”. So we spend days and days shooting. Once we are printing in the darkroom, as we answered in the previous question, we need to be highly focused. And If we are not printing but experimenting new things, we will need an extra mental effort and concentration to advance by research, trial and error.

DM: Unlike many artists who stay strict to a single process throughout an individual series, you intermix processes (pigments, silver, cyanotype, etc) for specific images within the same body of work, The Mouth of Krishna for example. How do you decide which process should be applied to a specific photograph?

AC: That just depends on what we want to represent with the print we are creating. Each process has different features, regarding texture, tone, hue, chroma, density, reflection. We select the process whose feature helps us to enhance the feeling, idea or message that we want to express in a particular image.
DM: On that same topic, your various series seem to be mostly open-ended and you return to them each from time to time as opposed to completing one and moving on. Is this accurate, and if so, a reflection of how you make photographs spontaneously in the field and interpret them later?

AC: The Argentinian photographer Humberto Rivas taught us about portraiture and landscape long time ago. He always used to say: “A las imágenes hay que dejarlas dormir” (“you should let images sleep”). The idea was to develop your rolls and forget about them. When enough time has passed, you can look at these images in a more objective way because you have become detached from the environment where you took them and can start to interpret them in the darkroom in a more “universal way”, let’s say. In addition to this, when we start to interpret an image we can arrive where we wanted to go very fast or we can need days, months or years (with a lot of tests in the middle) to be happy with the result. So we can talk of a cyclical process of shooting, letting them sleep, interpreting, copying, letting them rest again, taking them up, re-interpreting and so on.
DM: NYX, your most recent published work, is also your most abstract. Do you plan to continue in this more graphic and abstract direction for future work?

AC: To go from an idea or concept to an object, we often go through intermediate stages that are much more abstract. The process would be: We got caught by an idea or concept found in a text, an excerpt, a film, a painting, a poem… We find an abstract representation of the former, sometimes, created by another artist. And we go out shooting, looking for a reality that can represent the former abstraction. This is why abstract painting helps us find the link between the original idea and photography. That abstract result which lies between the idea and the representation is what we have never shown but we would like to do it now . We are working on this objective and also on the new series called “The Indestructible"

DM: What can you tell us about new work or ideas you’re currently exploring? You have hinted at the idea of “ The Indestructible”. Anything more that you can share there?

AC: Federico Ferrari, who is an Italian philosopher and art critic, curated our first solo show in Galleria de’ Foscherari, which represents our work in Bologna. On the occasion of the exhibition he created a text called “The Indestructible” inspired by our work and based on the idea of the same name created by Kafka. In the Zürau Aphorisms, Kafka names the divine for the first time calling it the "indestructible". In this way, it refers to what is hidden but is always present:

“The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.”

- Franz Kafka

Ferrari in his text reflects on the fragility of life, the boundaries between us and the world, the “here and now”, about how to be “complete in your essential incompletion”, about how to be “indestructible”. He generously gifted us his text telling us to do whatever we wanted with it. As the text is so inspiring and powerful, we decided to start a new series investigating its essence to translate it into images creating a new series.
DM: In closing, I know you are both voracious readers. What’s on your coffee table at the moment?

AC: We are working on the ideas stated above and thus we are reading or re-reading different kinds of books but connected to those topics in an undisciplined manner. As our coffee table is quite small and the books to read a lot, we’ve piled the books that we are more frequently consulting now...
All print acquisitions include free delivery and a signed copy of the artist's award-winning debut monograph "remembering the future".

Prices are shown un-framed, however, we are happy to provide a quote and framing coordination as needed. Sales tax (9.25%) applies to sales within California.

Click here to view more work by Albarrán Cabrera.

Inquiries: info@marshallgallery.art

Thank you for taking the time to view this presentation, and now more than ever, for your continued support of the gallery and artists.

- DM

An Ethereal Glow: The enigmatic work of Albarrán Cabrera

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Click on any images for a larger view, work details and pricing information.

Early Work

The Mouth of Krishna & This is you (here)

JAPANESE PAPER GIVES US A CERTAIN FEELING OF WARMTH, OF CALM AND REPOSE... WESTERN PAPER TURNS AWAY THE LIGHT, WHILE OUR PAPER SEEMS TO TAKE IT IN, TO ENVELOP IT GENTLY, LIKE THE SOFT SURFACE OF A FIRST SNOWFALL. - J. Tanizaki

You walk past, turning to look again, and yet again; and as you move away the golden surface of the paper glows ever more deeply, changing not in a flash, but growing slowly, steadily brighter, like color rising in the face of a giant.

OR AGAIN YOU MAY FIND THAT THE GOLD DUST OF THE BACKGROUND, WHICH UNTIL THAT MOMENT HAD ONLY A DULL, SLEPY LUSTER, WILL, AS YOU MOVE PAST, SUDDENLY GLEAM FORTH AS IF IT HAD BURST INTO FLAME.

KAIROS

NYX

PLATINUM-PALLADIUM PRINTS ON GAMPI PAPER OVER GOLD LEAF

Such is our way of thinking-we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

- Jun'ichirō tanizaki

ARTIST INTERVIEW BY LENSCULTURE

Artist Interview - July 2020