Luisacatucci Gallery

LUISACATUCCI GALLERY ARTIST DOSSIER IRENE CRUZ Short Biography Irene Cruz is a Spanish photographer and video artist born in Madrid in 1987, currently living and working in Berlin. She studied Advertisement & Public Relations and Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid. Later, she attended an International Master at EFTI specializing in Conceptual Photography and Artistic Creation. Her visual work is mainly focused on the relationship between nature and human being, her photos always present a soft and delicate scene where the human subject is harmoniously integrated into the natural environment. Light has a central role in Irene’s creative process, she is always looking for a specific, soft and natural light able to give to her shots an ethereal and daydream dimension. The research of this celestial light is the reason why she’s mainly shooting and working in Northern Countries such as Germany or Iceland. Irene Cruz’s artworks have been presented in several exhibitions, art fairs and festivals around the world, winning many awards like “Fototalnetos” and “Iberdrola Photography Contest”. Among her most recent projects, there is a collaboration with the Spanish National Award photographer Isabel Muñoz in Japan. In 2017 Irene performed as a DoP for the first time on Alejo Moreno’s feature film titled “Diana”, which premiered during the last edition of the Malaga Film Festival. From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 Moonlight “The path of transformation begins in the body, The soul moves itself through an intact eternal land, I embrace its depths hoping to become one with the Earth. The hopeless dust was once the burning lava, I get lost in its dark blurred immensity, A dot on the black fields melting against the tide. Purple lines crush the brightness of the last sunset, Fixed widened pupils broken by the incandescent sky, The forgotten rebellion of an exhausted soldier. The patient water sublimates rusty wounds, Turning them into ferocious scars of future legends, That will wipe away my fear and hunger. If only I could trap the wind in the center of my eyes, And erase my reasoning as it consumes the instinct, Then I could fuse my conscience with the crying landscape. Its spirit cradles me softly in an ethereal lap, Carrying me as a child till the next moon awakes, My existence is captured by the purest beauty. The broken waves are stopped by these bare hands, They are pushed to a frozen shore, That receives them kindly anticipating their death. The ice unleashes the mind from an unwanted slumber, There will be no blood, but the heart remains, I promise this won’t be a permanent farewell. I’ve found my roots in the birth of a volcano, Holding my origin back as a curious animal, Beating lifeless dreams among the stones.” Nadia Tunez From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 INTERVIEW TO IRENE CRUZ by Muriel Resnik for SingularArt How did you find your voice as an artist? Spending time with myself is important. I normally live in my parallel world half of the time. I’m not scared of failure, what is important to me to create, I believe that nothing we do is by accident. By failing I learn about what I can improve and what I don’t like, which is also important. I love to daydream. I give myself plenty of time to think, to write the things I connect with on a note book. With this in mind, I try my artworks to be a mirror of my inner universe as much as I can. Could you describe your procedure for a new photo project? I look within myself, for which I normally start drawing and painting on a note- book the images that appear in my mind. I also write down other ideas that may emanate from the main one. In Berlin it is very easy for me to find the places I imagine. When I have an initial idea, I ask myself a lot of questions about it, I ask others about their own thoughts. I read about it, and I start a creative process to express it through my photographic language. When the idea starts to be solid, I prepare the shootings. Sometimes I need an assistant, because normally I shoot when its raining, or I am working inside of a lake. Since I work 99% of the times with natural light, I only shoot when light condition is best outside. I feel comfortable in blue-lights, I feel it truly represents the spirit of my work and that is the most important thing for me. If I don’t like the light, I don’t work. Where comes your inspiration from? No idea ever comes to me suddenly; it sits inside me for a while until it reaches the surface. I am not sure where exactly my ideas come from. Berlin, and the experiences that I have here really help on that, it is an amazing place to create. It is very important to feeling inspired to go elsewhere: to move away from the city and into the forest. I also enjoy to sit on a plane and disconnect from the world for a number of hours. Train journeys are good. Sometimes I sit on the Berliner ring S- Bahn as it loops around the city. I observe people; I watch movies or music videos, I read, I think about the conversations that I have. Sometimes the inspiration comes from the imagination that awakens the books that I read, mostly of them, philosophy or sociology of authors like Nietzsche, Simmel, Ritter, Spinoza, Heidelberg, or Sennett. These are some of my favourites. From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 “Habitat I and Habitat II” Body and lanscape awareness “The artist creates through different ways a habitat: a place which joins together the suitable conditions to encourage a fertile relationship between life, Art and nature.” As Joachim Ritter suggests, the landscape is a cultural construct created by modern society, which being away from nature is only able to admire its beauty once it has emancipated from the needs that linked it to nature. Nevertheless, the landscape does not exist without a spectator that consid- ers that this piece of nature is subject to be contemplated, the artist invites the spectator to adopt another viewpoint. She pushes the spectator to aban- don his passive observer role and to get into nature so as to get his body involved by nature. At the same time, while the body becomes a receptacle of sensations during this aesthetic experience, it is when the body gets into nature when it becomes a conscious part of nature. As the artist claims, our society has forgotten that we are a part of nature, that we come from nature and that it rules over us, those are the reasons why we shall come back to nature. Sol Izquierdo abour Irene Cruz’s series “Habitat I and Habitat II” From the series “Habitat I”, 2014 From the series “Habitat I”, 2014 INTERVIEW TO IRENE CRUZ by Julia Mari Bernaus for ArtConnect In your artworks there is never good weather. If you still lived in Spain, would you be able to create such artworks? Yes, but not in Madrid city centre where I used to live. Normally I was always going to the Mountains in Northern Madrid (Guadarrama, Soto del Real…) and also San Rafael in Segovia, where my best friend and one of my muses, Sara, has a lovely house. You get very close to your model, how do you choose them? In the beginning, I was only doing self-portraits, but with Blumen series, in 2013 I started to work with my most beloved friends, dressing my own clothes, hiding their faces and their identities in order to become genuine photographic vital doubles. So around 99% of the times people that are an important part of my life. It’s easier for me to create a connection with them. You’ve been in Berlin for a while already, how has the city influenced your artwork? Berlin gave me the strength to continue with this hard career, has given me the opportunity of survive, and also its wonderful light, its wonderful wilderness (very close to the actual city). Also, finding people that has a sen- sibility for arts. There is a lot of nudity in your picture, why is that? Because I am talking about nature. I want people to feel comfortable with their own naked bodies, the real “us” is that, and not the clothing or disguises that we use to cover up what we don’t feel good about, what we’ve been told is not ok, what we truly are. What has influenced you the most in your work? Countries like Sweden or Berlin, the blue light, yearning of knowledge, cinema, philosophy, literature…I am always influenced by the things I do, the things I see, I don’t always know where my inspiration comes from. But I can say that all my works are continuous life learnings. And my projects have fed themselves one from each other all along my career. From the series “Habitat I”, 2014 From the series “Moonlight”, 2018 INTERVIEW TO IRENE CRUZ by Esther Harrison for ArtBerlin Which of these elements (space, air, fire, water, earth) would you choose in relation to your practice and/or your self, and why? I mostly do photography, cinematography and video art, although I am more into analogue photography. I feel like my images flow through space and time, I freeze moments that I’ve imagined before, that I’ve projected in my inner world, it’s quite a seamless process: it feels like a gust of wind, of sud- den inspiration.

Load more