2017.05.15
Paulo Nozolino – The Only Portuguese at PhotoEspaña 20 Years
 
2017.05.30—2017.08.27
Circulo de Bellas Artes, Sala Goya, Madrid, España
Loaded Shine

In the context of PhotoEspaña's 20 years in Madrid, the most important photography show in Iberian Peninsula and one of the artistic events marking the European artistic agenda, on the 30th of May, Paulo Nozolino will open the exhibition “Loaded Shine”, being the only Portuguese artist present at the Spanish capital.
    
The invitation from Alberto García-Alix stems from the free rein given to him by the show's organization that wanted to celebrate its 20 years of activity in the best way. "In Paulo Nozolino's work there is a destroyed whole that speaks to us and questions us. Like a fire slowly burning. In it, abstraction gets substance. The decomposition of an oppressed landscape. The absence. The past inhabits it. The longing for emptiness. Maybe Nozolino started with a gaze at the sky...", writes Alix in the text “The Exaltation of the Being. An Heterodox Look.
    
The woek gathers 20 photographs limited by the time between 2008 and 2013 and by a geography that covers different places such as New York, Paris, Berlin and Lisbon, but also the rurality of countryside places in Portugal and in France. With a syntax loaded with symbols and still using 35mm film, the artist's photographs unveil his aware and conscientious look at a world in decadence and left to desolation, whilst never abandoning the pursuit of the truth and purity in the analogical process. "I cannot stop looking at what we're losing, honor and dignity. Word is not strong enough to say it. Only image can do it. The variants that Modernity has to offer don't interest me. I seek for the purity of everything that resists to progress' violence", says Nozolino.
    
In a brief description of the work, presented for the first time in Madrid, one can also read: "There is nothing of obscure in this Paulo Nozolino's work. The black's transparency shows a world in continuous destruction. Getting closer to the certainty of an ending. The decadence of the place. Life leaving traces of light. We have got this far. We are here. And rottenness, garbage and claustrophobic enclosure are what we have left. A quiet languishing that embraces a slow death. So slow that it makes us believe that it might not come."

"Loaded shine" opens on the 30th of May at 8 pm at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, Goya Room, in Madrid, and it can be visited from the 31st of May to the of 17th September. 

On the 1st of July at 6 pm,the artist participates in Leica Conference with Alberto García- Alix, with mediation by Alejandro Castellote, at the Fundación Telefónica's space, also in Madrid.