MADRID.- Galería Elvira González announces the coming exhibition of Chema Madoz, opening January 22nd. The exhibition -- the photographer’s first at the gallery -- consists of 35 photographs taken between 2012 and 2014. These new black-and-white images continue the artist’s signature method of creating poetic and surprising visual metaphors out of everyday objects. The exhibition will remain on view until March 14th.

Long-established on the international art scene, Madoz was awarded Spain’s National Photography Award in 2000, and he was featured in one of the outstanding shows in the 2014 edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles (France), Europe’s leading international photography festival.

Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) began his professional career in 1990, having completed his studies at the Centro de Enseñanza de la Imagen in Madrid. His first solo show took place in 1985 at the Real Sociedad Fotográfica in Madrid, and in 1988 the Sala Minerva at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid presented its first show of photography with work by Madoz.

In the 1990’s, Madoz began using everyday objects to create dream-like Surrealistic images, a working methodology he has continued to employ up to the present day.

“Madoz lets us know how many different lives might lie in wait within a matchstick or a staircase, if their destinies had not been to serve our need for fire or to conquer gravity,” writes the philosopher and art historian Luis Arenas. “All Madoz’s worlds are improbable, yes, but they are not impossible; they stand before us, demonstrating their reality.”

Madoz has received a wide range of prizes, such as the Kodak Prize in 1990 and the Bolsa de Creación Artística from the Fundación Cultural Banesto in 1993. Art-Plus published Chema Madoz (1985 - 1995), the first monograph on Madoz’s work in 1995, and in 1999 the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago de Compostela organized a large-scale exhibition of his work. In 1999 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía hosted Madoz’s solo show Objetos 1990 - 1999, the first retrospective of a living Spanish photographer held at the museum.

Since then, Madoz has exhibited widely in galleries and arts institutions in Spain and internationally, including the Real Sociedad Fotográfica in Madrid, the Netherland Photomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fundazione M. Marangoni in Florence, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, and Fotofest in Houston.

Madoz’s work forms part of numerous public and private collections, such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Centro Andaluz de Fotografía, the Fundación Juan March, the Fundación Telefónica, the Fundación Coca-Cola, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, IVAM, Spain’s Ministerio de Cultura, the Fundación Foto Colectania in Barcelona, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.