{"id":8028,"date":"2019-03-15T20:53:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T13:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathmanduphotobkk.com\/?p=8028"},"modified":"2024-02-21T15:20:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T08:20:03","slug":"future-l-i-m-b-o-rafael-martinez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathmanduphotobkk.com\/?p=8028","title":{"rendered":"L i M B O \/ Rafael Martinez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kathmandu<\/a><\/p>\n

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Kathmandu Photo Gallery<\/p>\n

proudly presents<\/p>\n

L i M B O<\/h1>\n

Photographic Exhibition by<\/p>\n

Rafael Martinez<\/p>\n

11 May -24 June 2019<\/p>\n

[Exhibition Opening Party Saturday 11 May, 6:30 \u2013 9 pm<\/em>]<\/p>\n

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S<\/strong>trange horizons beckon to Rafael Martinez, and therefore to us, his viewers: ominous towers loom over eerie clumps of vegetation; an empty playground call to us from behind an archway jungle-jim, seemingly the gateway to another world; a goalpost across a football field marking the border between man-tamed grass and the unruly coconut grove beyond. If the photographer is in limbo, it is because he can\u2019t make up his mind whether to stay safe or surrender to his lost horizon\u2019s siren song.<\/p>\n

T<\/strong>he daydreaming women section of \u2018Limbo<\/em>\u2019 invites a more complex response, but perhaps only because the world has so objectified women as sex and status symbols that it\u2019s almost impossible to see women simply as human-beings who have become the preferred photographic subjects for both men and women, young and old. Their clothes, their hair, their handbags, their shoes etc. are all socially permitted and even expected to be more expressive and colourful than the male. Their pronounced individuality enhances the universality of their mood. They are walking on crowded streets, but they are clearly elsewhere, absent, voided\u2014in limbo. This has no agonizing connotation as in the sense of impatiently waiting. It\u2019s waiting for nothing. It merely is.<\/p>\n

Rafael Martinez<\/strong>: \u201cI am searching and photographing margins and interstices. They are places where time passes less quickly, where streets are empty and calm with neither agitation, nor tumult. Ancient times are present and hypermodern City seems far away, while It is very close, just around the corner, conqueror and self-confident. It can be seen in the distance, high buildings pointing to the sky, but surrounded by jungle, like ruins and remains of an ancient, forgotten civilization. These interstitial and central margins, probably destined to disappear, are strange, fantastic and necessary places, sweet but a little disturbing, suitable sites for daydreams and fantasies. On my way in search of such places, I also photographed people, mostly woman, absorbed in their inner worlds. Physically present, their bodies on autopilot and their spirits taking refuge in their inner margins. They are dreaming awake, thinking about their worries and building other worlds.  Thus, these women, in this huge megalopolis, are no longer anonymous. The mask of neutrality that covered them, a few moments before, fell. We feel close to these reveries, that we all visit, without our knowledge and that snatch us, in a gap, out of time, out of space. We know how to recognize the face of the other, absent from the world, the face of one who wanders in his inner limbo, here partially and suddenly uncovered.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kathmandu Curator Manit Sriwanichpoom<\/strong>: \u201cRafael Martinez\u2019s work achieves both technical and artistic quality. He is able to communicate his emotions so the world experiences what he feels. His photographs of Bangkok reflect his nomadic existence as a diplomatic spouse, following his wife\u2019s job into unfamiliar cultures. However, his sense of alienation is shared by Bangkok\u2019s natives amidst their city\u2019s breakneck pace of change<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rafael Martinez<\/strong> (b. 1973 in Nice, France) has a master degree in macroeconomics. He took up photography in Bangkok where he has lived since September 2016. \u2018Limbo\u2019 is his first solo exhibition.<\/p>\n

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