This is the second installment of the Cuadernos de Campo project, in which they collaborate, Photospaña and National Heritage. On this occasion with the Monastery of Yuste and its surroundings as protagonists. The place to which King Carlos was retired to live his last years after abdicating. And where he dedicated his time to cultivating his three great personal interests: astronomy, botany and mechanical mills.
The same ones who have focused the attention of the artists María Bleda and Jose Mª Rosa, National Photography Premium 2005-, by conceiving the collection of photographs that make up the exhibition the hours of the sun, newly inaugurated and that occupies three spaces: the gardens of the Moorish field, the ramp of the gallery of the royal collections and the immersive cube.
Sun hours is an artistic reflection around the sun as a symbol of time, life and history. During the opening ceremony, the artists explained how «taking as a starting point those foci of interest of Emperor Carlos V, we made a contemporary approach to the natural spaces of the monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste, so that these three elements, botany, astronomy and time measurement, cross the images».
Ana de la Cueva, president of National Heritage, María Santoyo, director of Photospaña and Joaquín Mollinedo, General Director of Institutional Relations, Communication and Brand of Actiona, who have agreed to value art as creator of collective consciousness.
A sample, three formats
The exhibition consists of images in three formats: a photographic sample, and an audiovisual installation integrated in the gallery of the real collections, an intervention in the Moorish field and a publication. Thus, when extended by interior and exterior spaces, it invites the leisurely vision of the photos, which contrasts with the enveloping audiovisual experience that is exhibited in the immersive cube.
José María Rosa detailed how “the project establishes an analogy between the solar cycle and the life cycle of nature and man, evoking a time in which the sun was a guide, measure and symbol, marking the hours, day, night, stations and the passage of time.”
The images are an invitation to visually travel the environment of the historic monastery. A tour that Bleda and Rosa have made with a contemporary vision these natural spaces. “In this images, Rosa detailed, the trips of other historical characters that, like us, came to this place moved by different interests and sensibilities,” are also inscribed. The artist referred to those who made the British Hispanicist Richard Ford and the Welsh photographer based in Spain, Charles Clifford in the nineteenth century. Both embodied their experiences, one in their “guide for travelers in Spain”, and the other in their photograph of the emblematic walnut of the monastery.
The sun’s hours will travel to the Yuste monastery in mid -September, where photographs may be contemplated in the environment in which they have been created.
Field notebooks
The sun’s hours are part of the Trienal Field Notebooks project in which they collaborate, Photospaña and National Heritage, to promote that great national photographers value the natural heritage of the Royal Sites.
Last year, for the Campo Notebooks Javier Vallhonrat directed his gaze on the “Water in the Royal Palace of the Farm”, an experience from which a visual reflection arose about the encounter between nature and human ingenuity, which originated the emblematic ornamental sources of that palace.
The three entities also collaborated in 2022, when they jointly promoted the exhibition of the recently deceased Sebastião Salgado that was exhibited in the Royal Palace of Madrid.
On the other hand, it acts and photospaña, -annual festival of photography that has been constituted as an international reference in plastic arts for the quality of the authors and the works presented in the official section -, maintain their alliance since 2017, under the premise of making visible jointly visible an artistic look on the human impact on the environment.