Exhibitions
José Guerrero's horizons at the MAPFRE Foundation
138 photographs give rise to 'José Guerrero. About the landscape'.
The exhibition panorama is important at the Fundación MAPFRE, specifically at the Sala Recoletos in Madrid, and from June to the end of August, José Guerrero takes full advantage of an exhibition of two decades of photographs where the Granada native approaches the landscape as a living entity, creating a dialogue between the cultural footprint of the past and the collective imagination.
José Guerrero. A propos del paisaje, curated by Marta Gili, is part of the official section of the PhotoEspaña Festival and is the artist's first major monographic exhibition. Along with the selection of pieces, José Guerrero has created a piece in the streets of the medina of Fez in Morocco, with the support of the Fundación MAPFRE itself.
José Guerrero
La Mancha #01, #02, 2009 Diptych Pigment print on cotton rag paper Private collection © José Guerrero, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
It is essential to start from the principle of José Guerrero and his conception of the landscape as an active and dynamic entity, taking cultural elements, the collective imagination and sociopolitical points, intertwining them all in an intriguing way. A snapshot of the author of Granada implies a relationship of the surroundings, of alterations, of elements that surround that place, together with the stratification of time and memory.
The creation in series, builds an imaginary in the form of a mosaic, of varied meanings and Guerrero does not seek repetition, but the difference where a character who acts as a character can be intervening, but also intervened. Most of them are shown as polyptychs, instead of as isolated images. This way of ordering the series allows him to build a mosaic of snapshots around the same place, which allows the visitor to enter a kind of sensorial journey.
The tour of the Sala Recoletos is built by 138 photographs and audiovisuals, with a common thread where representation, experimentation, light, darkness, transparency, document and abstraction are displayed. Six sections divide the entire set: Horizons, Carrara, Archaeologies, Brecxes, BRG and GFK.
José Guerrero
Carrara #04, 2016 Pigment print on cotton rag paper Fundación MAPFRE Collections © José Guerrero, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
Stopping in front of one of the moments captured by José Guerrero means seeing/living a landscape that is not a physical, visible and palpable matter. It is creating a link with the emotional and intuitive element, one of those elements that in many moments is not seen, but exists with all the possible branches that it can evoke.
The GFK series is the most recent by José Guerrero (2024 to the present), printed in large format on tapestry or canvas, arises from arbitrary errors within the coding of the digital archive at the moment the photographic part is taken. A conceptually attentive look at the same texture within works that glimpse the absence of a landscape.
José Guerrero BRG-331, 2024 Pigment print on cotton rag paper Courtesy of Galería Alarcón Criado © José Guerrero, VEGAP, Madrid, 2025
On Tuesday, June 10, Bonart will present the magazine with a start marked by a visit to the exhibitions of José Guerrero, Felipe Romero and Nicholas Nixon, with a subsequent welcome from Iñaki González (Fundación MAPFRE) and Ricard Planas (CEO of the Bonart group), a projection of video art by Roc Parés with the 200 covers of Bonart and a finale with a round table Art and communication with Luisa Espino, Eugenio Ampudia, Rosalía Banet and César Martínez.
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