The Festival Internacional de Fotografía de Castilla y León (FIFCYL) presents two exhibitions by Miguel Vallinas.
Segundas Pieles (Second Skins) brings together a gallery of portraits featuring anthropomorphic beings, half-animal and half-human. They confront nature and culture, and they also confront two temporalities in the history of humanity, two forces which confront each other but at the same time coexist harmoniously within the image. It is all a matter of weighting in the sitter’s pause, in their three-quarter pose, in the tonality of their clothing, in a mastery of light reminiscent of the chiaroscuro of the great Renaissance painters.
These portraits respond to a pictorial tradition that Vallinas masters with excellence, referring to the great Italian masters such as Piero della Francesca or Titian, but also to a tradition of Spanish art and painters such as Zurbarán or El Greco. Segundas Pieles (Second Skins) speaks of the versatility of identity, and proposes a kaleidoscopic vision of it, as if identity could be a conjunction of several facets.
A second exhibition of Vallinas, one of the most internationally renowned photographers of Castilla y León, will be held at the Nexo990 Exhibition Space in Monzón de Campos. A selection of 20 photographs from one of his most emblematic series will be on display: Ceci n’est pas.
After Skins and Second Skins, the series of images Ceci n’est pas (This is not) is the latest instalment in the Spanish artist’s trilogy on the deconstruction of human identity. It is a reference to the history of art, in particular to a leading figure of surrealism: the Belgian painter René Magritte.
Text for the exhibition organized in collaboration with Pallantia Photo.
Festival Internacional de Fotografía de Castilla y León – FIFCYL
Miguel Vallinas : Segundas Pieles / Ceci n’est pas
Until May 29, 2021
Paseo del Salón de Isabel II
