By Ricardo Cases with the participation of Pablo Casino & Pascual Arnal
NEW DATE: November 12, 2020 at 19:00h*.
Venue: Aula Magna, La Nau Cultural Center.
*Registration and reservation of place to cultura@upv.es, name, ID and contact telephone number.
Going even deeper into the photographic language that was born with ‘Paloma al aire’ (2011), in ‘Estudio elemental del Levante’ (developed between 2010 and 2020) Ricardo Cases squeezes the meanings offered by his immediate environment, the Mediterranean coast, where he finds manifestations of all phenomena, of all relationships.
Beyond the classic tourist icons of beach and paella, Cases looks at a series of signs of identity with deeper and more subtle meanings. There appear Levantine icons such as the bands of music, the palm groves, the brick. And there appears the story of the red palm weevil (rhynchophorus ferrugineus): a parasite from Southeast Asia that attacks palm trees, causing them to wither and die. The triangle formed by the palm tree, the charanga and the red palm weevil defines the spiritual map of the systemic crash of contemporary Spain, of a violent and screeching collision.
In the book, created from the idea of collage, the images seem to have been affected by the plague, fading some of its zones. The superposition generates a delirious score whose musical structure is chaos, provisionality. Estudio elemental del Levante’ is, in short, a requiem for a way of life that had its moment of mad splendor.
We are waiting for you!