BLUR
“One day, some friends were talking about their childhood memories; they had any number; but I, who had just been looking at old photographs, had none left. […] The photograph is violent: not because it shows violent things, but because on each occasion it fills the sight by force, and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed.1”. It is in this sense, in which we can state that photographic truth eclipses the truth in the eyes of memory.
"Niebla" emerges from this eclipse, questioning a set of photos from a family collection. While regarding the reality of what actually happened, tending towards certain alterations, there is a creation of a group of altered images, represented through drawings and words. Martínez Bellido has selected pictures from his family photo album as a model for an autobiographical representation, resorting to the traces of moments lived by his family to delve into the complex daily act that is remembrance.
1. Barthes, R., (1990) La cámara Lúcida. Barcelona, Paidós Ibérica.
ARTIST VISIT: 12 december 2015. 12.30 h.
GAlLERY
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Cádiz, 1992
Obtained a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville in 2014. The artistic output of José Manuel Martínez Bellido explores the relationships between images, words and memory. Using drawing as its principal analytical medium, his work simultaneously questions representation, narrative and recollections.
He has participated in various group shows, most notably: BIUNIC and De lo efímero y lo perdurable at Fundación Valentín de Madariaga (Seville, 2015), La Caja: Sobre lo colectivo y el caos at the Seville Faculty of Fine Arts (Seville, 2014), and Creamos intercambios at Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo (Seville, 2013). He has also received several grants, including the Beca de Paisaje awarded by Fundación Rodríguez-Acosta in Granada (2014), the Beca Sevilla es Talento from the Institute of Culture and Arts of Seville (2014), and the Beca Creamos Intercambios from the Seville-based Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo (2013).
