With this, the artist wants to represent the modern, rational, and organized city for economic life but leaves its meaning open to personal interpretations, conceiving them as a mirror of
current modern life.
The double gaze: architectures of the void by Jose Conceptes. Photograph by Jose Conceptes.
The double gaze: architectures of the void by Jose Conceptes. Photograph by Jose Conceptes.
The double gaze: architectures of the void by Jose Conceptes. Photograph by Jose Conceptes.
Project description by Jose Conceptes
In this series, Jose Conceptes expresses his taste for the character of the strokes, the play of lights and shadows, and the coordination of all the elements. The organization of space and the subtleties of those straight elements, where the curve is almost fictitious, are another of the characteristics of the photographic work of Jose Conceptes. A black and white photograph where color is non-existent, where the security of the urban landscape is reflected in constructions understood as a product of the imagination. His works generate some confusion because they are presented as finished but instead appear as an unfinished whole, in continuous change. That is the double view between what we find as typical or touristy and the less known areas of the New York “Big Apple”.
His images seem to mix both realities, highlighting the clean photographic composition, clean of any element attached to it and free of drama. There is nothing artificial, what is there is the real thing that is seen. A real architecture in which the artist plays with space and size, proposing old buildings as a scale until turning those into the true protagonists. Of his work, the geometric shapes stand out, lacking temporality, which is applied to the representation of a void extensive to the space they fill. The modern, rational city, is organized for economic life in which its photographed elements act as a bridge between reality and what the viewer captures.
They are contrasts where three-dimensionality is ignored to generate its own space through the use of light itself. Minimalism and conceptuality, are two concepts so fashionable in our time that they are present in his work. They are black and white photographs that represent a coldness separated from all human presence. At first glance with the buildings and their scenery, but with his technique and vision he manages to make them seem like something other than what is known, so their usual meaning is open to personal interpretations, to be conceived as a mirror of modern modern life, causing scenic desolation.
