JOSÉ MANUEL BALLESTER

Thresholds of silence.

April 10 – September 14, 2014.

José Manuel Ballester’s photographic exhibition, THRESHOLDS OF SILENCE, is an unprecedented project in which the artist immerses himself for the first time in a medium- sized city, with a rich historical past, in order to transport it into the present and create a dialogue with it. Aside from the works in the Museum, the exhibition includes four installations in the Alcázar, the Academia de Artillería, the Museum of Segovia, and the Church of San Juan de los Caballeros, in a conversation that invites us to visit places that have inspired the show along with others suited to the works on display.

The exhibition gathers sixty-four works by the artist. Fifty-two of them have been created exclusively for this project. Another twelve belong to his series, Hidden Spaces.

The Thresholds of Silence project emerged in 2007, when the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art commissioned the photographer José Manuel Ballester to photograph places within Segovia that would bring to light the architectural, pictorial, and natural riches hidden within the city. Whether pertaining to the private sector, cloistered, or located in reserves difficult for the general public to access, these treasures remain hidden. These are works that, like the majority of those that our city houses, emphasize their universality.

Over the years Ballester has photographed spaces that are hidden, open, and closed, as well as architectural works, and historic landscapes that bear an extensive cultural mark. Spaces charged with the diverse lives that have passed through them over time.

As in the majority of his works, his Segovia photographs represent spaces that are silent, solitary, and still; works that demonstrate and define, first and foremost, empty spaces that inspire reflection. In them he emphasizes a singular interpretation of architectural space, of emptiness and light, the renewal of photographic technique and their pictorial character.  Thanks to the use of computers to redraw, illuminate and add color to spaces, along with the manipulation that new materials and printing techniques allow, Ballester has brought back an artisanal character to photographic creation. His works not only speak to us visually about composition, lines, planes, geometry, color, and light, but also about atmosphere, biological life and of the human footprint they shelter. The artist’s use of large formats invites the spectator to enter the work and share his observant perspective.

Although Ballester’s dedication to architecture, emptiness, and silence is well-known, up until now, he had never produced a systematic incursion into hidden architectural areas from the past. Nevertheless, these works have an intimate relationship with the ones from his Hidden Spaces series, in which the artist photographed masterpieces from art history without their main characters. Both series feature decontextualized spaces where the past continues, resonating in the lives they shelter. For this reason, the exhibit incorporates a selection from the Hidden Spaces series in order to deepen its meaning and serve as a link to a common thread. Including this selection also allows for the dissemination of the works throughout the city.

Continuing on with the wheel of life metaphor, a series of groupings suggest certain attitudes and essential questions before what we are about to see. A first grouping is organized around WATER, in relation to the origin of life. The second revolves around LIGHT, which, along with its predecessor, also shares a connection to the origin of existence, adding to it the symbolism of intellectual or spiritual knowledge and pure physical illumination. The third is organized around SPACE, where everything is manifested, sharing with the fourth and final group of photographs dedicated to TIME, the transformations that are produced along with the passage of life toward death, indications of a biological or spiritual rebirth.

The photographs on display at the Museum, were shot at the following locations: the Rueda estate or Don Álvaro de Luna estate, Segovia’s old prison, the Church of San Miguel, Episcopal Palace, San Antonio el Real Monastery, El Parral Monastery, San Vicente el Real Monastery, Monjas Dominicas de Santo Domingo el Real Monastery, Academia de Artillería, the Cathedral, and the Alcázar. Doors, interior roofs, stairs, towers, cloisters, gardens, ponds, refectories, choirs, cells, hallways, courtyards, and libraries, have been photographed at these locations.

This exhibition is a fascinating journey through the city, not only by way of space, but through time as well, of chronological times, emotional and imaginary ones, and of all the lives it encompasses. It also appeals to the interior world, to the spectator’s psyche, which is activated by the surprise the uninhabited images can cause. It moves us to reflect on the internal life of the space that inhabits us.

The exhibition culminates with a sound installation created exclusively by the nature sound technician, Carlos de Hita. Within it, the sounds captured outdoors remain enclosed within the Museum’s auditorium, tracing a lineless drawing of the stone city. Sound and its reflections, echoes and reverberations, fill the city’s spaces and reproduce a sounding geometry: the roofs in the bill-clattering of storks, the walls in the voices of crows, the measurement of time while the bells fall silent.

Sponsored by Abertis Autopistas.