URBAN SHAPES

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DESIGN

17th October to 18th November 2019

ARTIST

APRIL KEY
MARCO LABORDA
MONICA MENEZ

Curated by Francisco Vaz Fernandes

In the pursuit of a multifaceted programming, CABANAmad gallery brings together 3 artists who, despite working with different disciplines and media, have in their logic of appropriation and construction of forms, relevant points of contagion. April Key is an English designer living in Istanbul who develops works from sculpture logics bringing references to architectural forms, including deco architecture. Her lamps from the Ocean Drive collection were originally inspired by the colorful Kodakcromes with views of Miami found in an Istanbul flea market. As in the silhouette of a city, there is an accumulation of geometric-like shapes crowned with neons. These are materials that bring us to the brilliance and magic of any city. Key lamps are laser-made, and neon glass tubes are hand-made by experienced local artisans, giving them the same magical tenderness of the cities.

The same formal setting of the 1950s seems to suggest the universe of Monica Menez, who works and live in Stuttgart, and is fashion photographer, who likes to recreate cinematic environments. Alongside with fashion films, most of her photography is classified as product photography, as it is created for fashion magazines. The execution of the image requires a constructive process and a rigorous execution to reach a transgressive and sensual image. Although in some ways it touches kitsch and some unrealism, this regressiveness leads the creator to a sense of liberation and permissiveness. In other words, the pictures are the mirror of freedom that shapes big cities like Stuttgart. Monica Menez has worked for Vogue Portugal, as well as many other reference fashion titles.

Also in the work of Marco Laborda, a catalan artist living in Madrid, we find a constructive process and a certain surreal emotion in his collages on photography. Having the portrait as a reference, he deconstructs the images cropping and reconstructing them, applying collages. In this sense, he refuses a naturalistic logic by joining formal elements that disfigure the portrait and add a new plasticity to the final work. The new accumulated forms deepen the beings proposed to us and give them surrealistic aspects, an experience that meets the modernist path of the representation of the real. The disfigurements of beings created by Marco Laborda lead us to the world of transfiguration of being in the complexity of urban societies.