A couple of photographers, he (Jose Viciana) specializing in still life and she (Teresa Marco) in fashion, are united by their two great shared passions: art and nature. This is how COBELIO was born.
The artists play with the viewer's limit to recognize the photographed nature, they seek to suggest, to attract towards a bridge between the dreamlike and the real.
They have worked on a visual language that seeks to merge the styles of the past they love with their digital photographs: the first cave paintings 30,000 years ago, Greek ceramics and Egyptian drawings, the monochrome of classical bas-reliefs, Japanese drawings by Hokusai or Utamaro, the wonderful plant photographs by Blossfeldt and Edward Weston. How to make all of this feel contemporary.
They make a study on sacrifice as a means of creation. The painful suppression of a part generates a new whole, a reality with unsuspected edges where subtracting gives us an unexpected abundance of beauty and visual interest. In a parallelism with time spilled in grey, boring or distressing moments that, in some way, give us a broader perspective of what it means to live and allows us to distinguish and covet the sweet stages.
Among these difficult phases, the artists have chosen to concentrate on the battles we fight to achieve our aspirations. Sometimes it is necessary to take leaps of faith, make mistakes or suffer to reach higher and to build our identity.
Thus, in their photographs, the form faces a process of transformation, subjected to the dominion of light to be reborn in an unknown version. The volume is sectioned revealing silhouettes previously unnoticed. Different planes, different moments captured in the same vision.
At this point, the material aspect of the work plays a major role. There is a primitive emotional connection that artists ascribe to natural, earth-related, irregular and ancestral materials such as clay or plaster. But how can digital photography be transferred to a tangible medium with these properties? For the artists, paper is insufficiently imperfect, excessively refined. This made it inevitable to embark on an arduous process of self-taught research, with countless trial and error until they were able to transfer all the power of their images from the screen to the plaster. Now, photography and volume merge into a single entity, in an unexplored materiality far from traditional supports.
Is it possible, after thousands of years of humans representing still life, to surprise us once again? To feel attracted by a new, unknown perspective? They believe it is, and that it is worth exploring while we can still enjoy our increasingly threatened habitat.
With the intention of establishing a bidirectional relationship of forces, COBELIO tries to honor the splendor of nature by creating a series of photographs dedicated and conceived for each plant that they decide to admire and analyze in detail in their studio.
Because of the influence of their background in fashion photography, they venture to fantasize giving character to the plant as if it were a model posing for a portrait with its own personality. Or they play with its shapes and textures to evoke imaginary landscapes or architectures.
When you look at branches, leaves, flowers, roots... with a photographic eye, they give you evocative appearances that move you with their richness and refinement. For the artists, their works are a refuge, an oasis for the mind and the senses, whether you decide to stop to contemplate them or if they simply accompany you in your environment.
Product design engineers from the Elisava school in Barcelona and later photographers from the prestigious Idep school, their designs were finalists in various product competitions. Their contribution to the “Avenida de la Lana” in Madrid, commissioned by King Charles III of England, is noteworthy. Their creations as photographers have appeared in numerous renowned fashion and lifestyle media.
More info at: www.cobelio.com
