Chema Madoz

About

The artistic career of Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) began in 1990, after his studies at the Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen. His first solo show was at the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid in 1985, and in 1988 the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid held its first exhibition of photography with a show of Madoz’s work in the Sala Minerva. In the 1990’s Madoz began to develop his concept of objects, a theme which remains constant in his photography to date. "Through Madoz, we know how many possible lives might be hidden within a match or a ladder, if it had not been their destiny to serve our need for fire or to overcome gravity," according to the philosopher and art historian Luis Arenas. "For Madoz, all these worlds are, certainly improbable, but not impossible; for there they stand, demonstrating their reality to us." 

Madoz has received awards such as the Kodak Prize in 1990 and the Banesto Cultural Foundation’s Artistic Exchange in 1993. Chema Madoz (1985 - 1995), the first monograph dedicated to his work, was published in 1995 by Art-Plus. In 1999 the Galician Center of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela organized a solo exhibition of his work, and that same year the Reina Sofia Museum organized the solo exhibition "Objects 1990 - 1999", which was the museum’s first retrospective dedicated to a living Spanish photographer. He awarded in 2000 the National Prize for Photography.

Since then Madoz has exhibited in numerous galleries and art centers in Spain and abroad, such as the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid, the Canal de Isabel II, the Pompidou Centre in Paris , the Netherland Photomuseum Rotterdam, the Fondazione M. Marangoni of Florence, the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas and Fotofest International in Houston. 

His work is included in a many public and private collections such as the Reina Sofia Museum, the Andalusian Centre of Photography, the Juan March Foundation, the Telefónica Foundation, the Coca-Cola Foundation, the Buenos Aires Fine Arts Foundation, IVAM, the Ministry of Culture, the Fotocolectania Collection and Houston Museum of Fine Arts.