"Contrapunt", Sergi Aguilar to the Virreina Centre de la Imatge

Since the beginning of his career, at the beginning of the seventies, Sergi Aguilar (Barcelona, 1946) has developed a photographic practice that has unfolded in parallel with his productions in the field of sculpture.

Today, these images can be seen as a profound investigation into some of the central themes that have occupied the artist: for example, the void or sutures in the landscape, the buildings - of which he portrays the most bare volumetrics -, the framing that isolates and determines, or the tensions between appearance, seriality, and presence.

Contrapunt takes its title from the book of the same name by Don DeLillo, which was published in 2004 in the now-defunct magazine Grand Street. This essay investigates three films - Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988), Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993), and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) - as well as the novel El malaguanyat (1983), by Thomas Bernhard, and an old photograph by Robert Parent featuring musicians Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Roy Haynes playing at the Open Door in New York in 1953.

The exhibition brings together, for the first time and in a monographic way, a thorough selection of photographs along with various audiovisual projects. The museographic presentation aims to question the spatial hierarchies and codifications that determine certain ways of looking at images. Thus, a type of visual experience is proposed that is closer to what takes place in the artist's studio, even in old photographic developing rooms or film editing booths.

It can be visited for free from Tuesday to Sunday and holidays, from 11am to 8pm.