Javier Vallhonrat. Interaccións (2011-2015) Comisario: Santiago Olmo

This project, brought to CGAC after being presented at the Museum University of Navarra, constitutes the most recent body of work by artist Javier Vallhonrat. Under the title Interactions, it brings together 52 photographs, seven videos and a video installation. All of these works are divided into five sections—42ºN, Standard Drift, Boundary Friction, Record of Time, and Eolionimia—and distributed over the centre’s ground floor and first floor exhibition rooms.

The Interactions project was undertaken in high mountainous areas and environments with extreme weather conditions. The artist worked in these settings to create images in which uncertainty and unpredictability clash and tussle with man’s need for control. The slow passage of time and the uncertain setting of high mountains arise in conditions that generate vulnerability. In such circumstances, our perception of the ecological and geoclimatic niche in mountainous regions as alien and threatening gradually transforms, and we observe a place that is equally vulnerable, where knowledge and direct experience interact in the presence of uncertainty.

This project can be understood as an exploration of the mountain experience and man’s fragility in the presence of nature and extreme conditions, but it also raises questions about the different ways in which the landscape can be represented.

The start of the project can be traced back to 2010, when Javier Vallhonrat visited the photography collection at the Museum University of Navarra in Pamplona to take part in the Tender puentes project and focused his attention on two photographs of the Maladeta massif in the Huescan Pyrenees taken by Viscount Joseph Vigier following his ascent from Bagnères-de-Luchon to the Portillón de Benasque, at an altitude of 2440 metres, in the summer of 1853. Vigier’s photographs provided him with a starting point for his project and an opportunity to connect with one of the first photographers to experience the mountains firsthand.