It’s all about you

Art makes me feel. Art cracks open a fissure, which I love to delve into with further information from the artist, where it stands in art history, the context of the work’s production… but that comes after. First and foremost, art makes me feel. Sometimes it gives me profound calm and peace, other times it energizes me and feels like a fire ball in my body. Some works stand as a memento of that trip or that time when… and other works feel like an intellectual challenge I want to face head-on. What is your story?

I was studying art and film in Barcelona when Fundacio Foto Colectania was inaugurated in 2002. The not-for-profit private foundation owns a collection of 3,000 works by Spanish and Portuguese photographers. It also hosts exhibitions by international artists and opens-up private collections that would be hidden to then public otherwise. If I am in Barcelona, I never fail to visit. Here I saw a retrospective of Manuel Alvarez Bravo (b. Mexico, 1902-2002) in his birthday centenary in 2002. It was a personal selection by the artist and his wife, Colette Urbajtel. Alvarez Bravo passed away a couple of months after the exhibition closed and all of a sudden I felt extremely privileged to have witnessed the extensive work of a modern master.

All images copyright Asociación / Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

There are moments that stick with you. When, already living in London, I visited Kew Gardens for the Henri Moore exhibition of 28 large-scale sculptures set outdoors in 2007. Everything was going so well… until a spell of rain came through. I thought it had ruined the experience until I realized that the shimmers of water on bronze and the reflections of the light were transforming the work, emphasizing the enduring and harmonious relationship between form and the natural world.

Or when I entered Yayoi Kusama’s installation I’m Here, but Nothing (2000-2008) at Victoria Miro Gallery, presented alongside the installation of Narcissus Garden for the first time in the UK. Each visitor entered the mirrored cube alone. Not a gimmick and much more than an optical device, the work is conceived to physically transport us onto Kusama’s universe: one of hallucinatory isolation and disorientation but also of dream-like infinity.

Whether you appreciate art as a cultural, aesthetic and intellectual proposition or as a financial investment or both, art creates emotional bonds and a personal attachment. I would love to hear your anecdote; your WTF-moment; your memories after the first artwork you bought; that gallery pick-up moment… What is your story? Share on Instagram #myartmoment or comment here on the blog or simply send me a private email! I would love to hear your story.