One of the great figures in contemporary photography with a major international profile. His work can be found in the main museums and in important private collections. A visual poet with a unique perspective that discovers the extraordinary in the everyday.
Biography
José María Rodríguez Madoz was born in Madrid in 1958. From a young age he became aware of the possibilities offered by objects. In the early 80s he studied Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid and photography at the Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen.
It can be considered that 1985, the year in which he held his first solo exhibition at the Real Sociedad Fotográfica in Madrid, was a key moment in the artist’s career. He aroused the interest of critics, gallery owners and collectors and participated in important exhibitions.
It may seem that Chema recovers a childlike gaze, through which he concentrates on something and isolates himself from the outside world. He creates surprising, precise and spectacular images, with great economy of elements. He is a restrained, discreet and humble man, who puts his work first.
In 1991 he received the Kodak award and in 1993 the Banesto Cultural Foundation’s Artistic Creation Grant
Another key moment in his career was undoubtedly the year 2000 when he received the National Photography Prize, the Higashikawa Prize in Japan and the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum held the artist’s first anthological exhibition. He became the first living Spanish photographer to have a solo exhibition dedicated to him.
In 2006, the Telefónica Foundation hosted and organized, together with the Ministry of Culture, the second major retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work. It covers the period from 2000 to 2005. Almost a hundred black and white photographs are on display, reflecting the artist’s maturity, where the graphic representation of objects is his language.
After identifying that in the photographs in which the human figure is present, their faces hardly appear and if they do it is usually with their eyes closed, the characters do not contribute anything of their own to the images, he considers dispensing with the people and focusing on the territory of the objects.
Objects offer him the advantage of being a very specific field of action and a world that never ends. Together with the author’s own rich world, they allow him to evolve and grow. An inexhaustible source of inspiration and work.
In his relationship with objects, he looks for pieces that can be recognized and have a unique character; this means that they have a very diverse origin and he even transforms and creates them specifically.
When he works with these objects, he does so as if they were words. He works with ideas, with concepts and the reaction that the relationships between them provoke. He manages to get the viewer, when they see one of his photographs, to identify him as its author.
It is in this exhibition at the Fundación Telefónica, one of the few occasions in which it has been possible to appreciate, together with the photographs, the elements that he has used to construct them as sculptural pieces. Among them: a large wooden wheel, a staircase assembly that emulates a spider’s web and a door with notes of music on a staff. Visual poetry.
His work in the Telefónica collection
Chema Madoz does not give his works titles. He gives us total freedom to interpret and dream them.
Many of the elements that characterize the artist are present in this piece: the symbolism of objects, the work as language, simplicity, play, metaphor, sense of humor and poetry.
When I see this photograph I can’t help but smile and hum the song: …because you were communicating, communicating, communicating… And to think: what does that briefcase contain? Who does it belong to? Could there be someone inside it? If I pick up the phone, who will answer? What meetings has the briefcase been to? How many trips has it made?
In 2022 this work formed part of the Connections exhibition in the Telefónica Collection and was exhibited very close to the work of the artist Juan Muñoz, whom we talked about in a previous post. Great encounter between the works in the collection.
Chema Madoz has received many awards throughout his career. One of the most recent was the 2024 Honorary Photography Award for the 30th Anniversary of the ENAIRE Foundation. If you are in Cantabria, you have the opportunity to visit and enjoy the exhibition that is being held there these days.
