Florilegium
Joan Fontcuberta

 March 20 - June 9, 2024
Tower Room
Header image: Anthology, 2023
Curator: University of Navarra Museum

Using artificial intelligence, Fontcuberta constructs in Florilegium a fabulous imaginary flora like the one that captivated 18th-century explorers on their travels.

Joan Fontcuberta is interested in nature photography as a means of exploring the nature of photography itself. With this aim in mind, he has carried out numerous projects in which plants and vegetables have played a leading role, such as the Herbarium series (1982-85). Four decades later, he has remade this series and proposed new imaginary species. While his first work parodied Karl Blossfeldt's photographs of botanical specimens, in Florilegium he replaces collage and conventional photography with new algorithmic visualization tools, using artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms.

In another twist, the artist creates a series of landscapes with an emphasis on trees and shrubs, flowers and fruits, like those that amazed explorers embarking on scientific expeditions throughout the 18th century. Only now, that Terra Incognita is no longer limited to geography, but can expand into the universe of new imaginaries, virtual life, and the impressive hallucinatory capacity of the most advanced generative visualization technologies.

The artist thus establishes a dialogue with the exhibition A Promised Land: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Birth of Photography, which can be visited on floors 0 and -1 of the MUN. This exhibition develops the thesis that the scientific curiosity of the Enlightenment fostered the need for graphic descriptions of nature that were as literal as possible, and that this desire foreshadowed the photographic gaze. For his part, Fontcuberta offers a speculative proposal on the scientific Enlightenment of the future.

Florilegium takes its title from Lucretius' poem of the same name (On the Nature of Things, in English), from the 1st century BC, a tribute to Epicurus, the philosopher who founded a school of thought on the outskirts of Athens and called it "The Garden." Unlike other academies, "The Garden" admitted women and slaves. There, Epicurean thinkers developed philosophical concepts such as πρoληψις (prolepsis), praesumptiones, anticipations or anteceptions, which evoke what would be model images or general concepts of things, constituted by empirical experiences accumulated in our memory. 

That is precisely what happens in the supposedly photographic images presented at the MUN. This is an updated version of that school of thought and harmony with nature, in which we are all invited to reflect on the vicissitudes of our environment and our visual culture.

BIOGRAPHY

Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) is considered one of Europe's most important contemporary photographers and one of the most respected and recognized voices on the international scene. He is the only Spanish artist to have been awarded the Hasselblad Foundation Prize (2013)—one of the most important prizes in photography—in recognition of "one of the most inventive contemporary photographers, whose career of constant research into the photographic medium spans four decades. His work is distinguished by an original and playful conceptual approach that explores photographic conventions, systems of representation, and regimes of truth. Fontcuberta questions the concepts of science and fiction in interdisciplinary projects that go beyond the limits of the museum space.   

He was also honored in 1994 as Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, with the National Photography Prize in 1998 and the National Essay Prize in 2011. Apart from his artistic work, Fontcuberta has developed a multidisciplinary career in the world of photography as a teacher, critic, historian, and exhibition curator. In 1980, he co-founded the magazine Photovision, where he served as editor-in-chief for two decades. He has published several books on topics related to the history, aesthetics, and pedagogy of photography.  

His creative work, which deals with the conflicts between nature, technology, photography, and truth, has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MoMA in New York (1988); the Musée Cantini in Marseille (1990); the Art Institute of Chicago (1990); the MNAC in Barcelona (1999); the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (2001); Aperture Foundation in New York (2006); FOAM Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam (2010); and Casa de la Moneda in Bogotá (2011), among many others.  His works can be found in collections such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), San Francisco MoMA, National Gallery of Art (Ottawa), Musée d'Art Contemporain-Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MACBA (Barcelona), and the University of Navarra Museum.   

► ROOM SHEET

RELATED ACTIVITIES

Masterclass with Joan Fontcuberta/ March 20/ 7:00 p.m.

With the support of: Ernesto Fernández Holmann and Marta Regina Fischer Fernández