The architect and photographer started from the theme of light to subdivide the work into three different aspects: first, a sequence of black and white images where the volumes stand out at the same time that a play of light and shadow is generated; second, a series of color photographs that highlight the reality that the museum itself reflects, highlighting its architecture; Finally, with the help of a photographic game where the zoom is increased, it focuses on the entrance and exit zones of the different areas of the building that are reminiscent of Russian Constructivism.
Description by María José Gurbindo
This work on the Oteiza Museum is part of the IBIDEM project, in which I seek to portray well-known buildings from a personal point of view.
IBIDEM means 'In the same place' and is used to refer to something already named and that is repeated. I have appropriated the term to indicate the opposite; there is no repetition in the photographer's gaze even if his lens points to the same place.
The challenge of the work is to provide new visual records of buildings with an already consolidated image.
The Oteiza Museum in Alzuza, Navarre (1992-2003), was the project that the architect Sáenz de Oíza carried out to house and enhance the work of his friend Jorge Oteiza. A project that, as in on other occasions, he had the active complicity of the sculptor.
Without prejudice, without the initial conditions that accompany the commission of an architecture report, only from the experimentation of the Museum spaces through the objective, three different lines of work have emerged.
In all three, light is the protagonist but in a different way.
In the series of black and white photos I have looked for radical backlights to define the volumes of the architecture, eliminating the textures as if they were sculptural forms of Oteiza.
The second series focuses on how light, which is full of colors, nuances and enriches the perception we have of the sculptures and of the architecture itself. Light and color are important protagonists in the Museum.
The third series is focused on the area of the access ramps to the different floors of the museum. For she bears some resemblance to Russian constructivism in its forms that they seem to expand. The light also strongly marks the forms. These sensations I exaggerate with movements of the camera's zoom.
Russian Constructivism and Suprematism actively influenced Oteiza's work.
