CHEMA MADOZ September 8 - October, 2000
		"Artists are utilizing past vocabularies anew to forge inventive models,with one major difference. Photography no longer remains an independent bystander; rather, it is the primary player in the dialogue ofcontemporary art. Modernism, along with its time-tested tenets, is beingreapplied with a diversity of photographic means that are breaking fromthe past." -Steve Yates, Curator of Photography, MFA Santa Fe, New Mexico Chema Madoz will have a solo exhibition at Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery this September to open the fall season in Dallas. In his mid-career retrospective at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid (1999), he demonstrated an uncanny wit and intellect in approaching his art. He toys with our perspective creating a visual paradox. For example, a feather takes the place of the flame for a candle. A needle strings beads of water onto thread. Burned matches swimming in the same direction look like sperm through a microscope. Fishhooks are applied to the stem of a rose, replacing the thorn. All of these images are simply staged and thought provoking. Some are humorous, but most of these images test our visual awareness. At first glance the images seem normal, but a second glance jerks us into the surreal humor of the artist. Chema was born in Madrid in 1958. From 1980-83 he studied Art History and photography at la Universidad Complutense and El Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen in Madrid. 1985 marked the year of his first solo exhibition. From the beginning Chema Madoz played with the camera teasing with our vision, sometimes using a studio setting as he does now. He created sculpture to photograph early on, his wall of books looks like a brick wall, but the bricks are really book spines. Chema's work has been widely exhibited in Spain and France with a few exhibitions in the United States. This will be the gallery's first time to exhibit Chema's photographs. Since the gallery opened more than five years ago, Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery has been exhibiting work from around the world including artists from Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala,The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Korea. This exhibition will solidify the gallery's interest in expanding the art scene in the Dallas area.
		This artist is featured in our BOOKSTORE. Click here to read about our second Madoz solo exhibition. Visit our Chema Madoz: New Work online exhibition.