Biography:
Gabriel Figueroa Flores was born in Mexico City in 1952.
He obtained his degree in England, and took additional courses with Ansel Adams, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Arnold Newman and Eikoh Hosoe. His photographic interests mainly lie in travel and expeditionary photography, editorial work and fine printing. His artistic work has been exhibited in several Mexican and international galleries since 1979.
His most recent show Promised Places was exhibited in the Raul Anguiano Museum in Guadalajara and in Plaza Juarez in Mexico City in 2006. He has been a tutor of the “Young Creators” grant program of the Mexican Council for the Arts and Culture, and a member of the “National System of Artistic Creators” in Mexico. He recently participated in his first film production as director of photography. He currently is co-directing a feature length film about Diego Rivera, Gabriel Figueroa and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, using footage shot by these artists in 1949.
Statement:
Talking about Promised Places
Photography nowadays is a medium that is particularly capable to create imaginary spaces using a real architectonic space as a reference. The reality recorded in a photo is an abstraction that includes both the bi-dimensionality of the medium and the point of view of the photographer.
The always fascinating and enigmatic encounter with an architectonic structure implies a discovery, which is the key of the recurrences that suggest the foundation of the construction of my imaginary edifice, the borders of the imaginary architectonic spaces are redefined, and this is often quite a paradox. The same discoveries occur with either pre-Hispanic or contemporary architecture, since the eye of the imagination can find patterns and moments that fracture the linear reality of solid surfaces in every building. As Henry Focillon put it “The plastic forms are subject to the principle of metamorphosis, by which they are constantly renewed”. |
