Galerna 
Jon Cazenave
From 14 september to 30 october CC La Farinera del Clot
Galerna – Jon Cazenave
From 14 september to 30 october
CC La Farinera del Clot, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 837, Barcelona
informacio@lafarinera.org // 932 91 80 80
A Galerna is an extreme, sudden and violent storm that brings wind and cold from the Atlantic to the Cantabrian coast. Jon Cazenave began this work in 2007 with the firm determination to question his identity and his belonging to the territory. The inexorable tension of his place of origin, experienced and suffered since childhood, incites him to take action. Photography offers him a different perspective on his land, a land in which he lives but which he cannot decipher. Thus began a ten-year project that would lead him, beyond documenting a country, towards the discovery of his deepest self.
Galerna was born and built from image to image, year after year. In his first images, he was determined to show the political image of the Basque Country, but very soon he was overcome by the need to discover the soul of his territory and that of its origins. Little by little, he distanced himself from the documentary approach and moved towards another, more essential photographic language. Black, pure, direct images, carved out of the material, arrive. The author makes an incision in the landscape, his own landscape. Because Galerna is, above all, the encounter of a person with his land and his history.
Cazenave is a solitary walker who traverses this territory to become one with it, in a carnal and emotional body to body. From this physical – and philosophical – experience is born the return to the origins. The universal unites with the intimate and merges with its deepest identity. The elements are deafening. The stone, the water, the clouds, the trees transport him on an inner journey close to a mystical adventure. The sea and the mountains will be his purgatory.
After ten years of relentless, uncompromising photography, he senses a different direction. He discovers the cave, a sacred space frozen in time, and it is there that he meets his other self. In this place where it all began, Cazenave returns to the genesis of his story to take a final step in his work. Colour brings a new response to his quest and the stone, round and polished, becomes cosmic and levitates in the deep black that embraces it.
The conflict is no longer just a distant internal struggle. The anguish has been transcended through a symbolic and sacred vision. Cazenave opens up a final space for images. The horizon clears and white emerges. The rage has given way to a sublime calm. The sea foam now sounds like a sigh of relief.
Fannie Escoulen
Jon Cazenave (Basque Country – Spain, 1978)
Graduated in Economics and Business Studies at the University of Deusto in 2001, he moved to Barcelona to study documentary photography at IDEP Escuela de la imagen in 2006. From 2007 to 2019 he develops a photographic project called Galerna which he publishes with the iconic publishing house Éditions Xavier Barral and Dalpine in 2020.
An austere, intense and synthetic author, the roots of his work penetrate the conflict between nature and culture – reason and emotion – as a kind of rhizome that has grown and spread over the years.
In his beginnings, he tackled concepts such as identity and memory with an omnipresent backdrop: the landscape. Over time, this natural setting, traversed by the culture and history of human beings, has become the backbone of his work. It grows in multiple directions, ranging from the traces of prehistory to a metaphysical drift that connects it with the universal essence of nature. What was initially a documentary record has become charged with symbolism and is leading to a dynamic relationship with the landscape, intervening in the support that represents it or acting directly on the materials that inhabit it through techniques such as cyanotype, risography, transported charcoal or silkscreen printing. He uses a process based on the search for knowledge through introspective questioning, the ultimate aim of which is a better understanding of the context that surrounds him.
His work has been exhibited in public and private institutions such as Sala Canal de Isabel II (Spain), CaixaForum (Spain), Tabakalera (Spain), CentroCentro Palacio de Cibeles (Spain), CCCB (Spain), Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza (Spain), Guangdong Museum of Art (China), Museum Belvédère (Holland), Museo de Artes Visuales MUNTREF (Argentina) and Fotomuseum Antwerp (Belgium). He has participated in numerous international events, among them: Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (France), Noorderlicht Photofestival (Holland), Guangzhou Image Triennial (China), Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de América del Sur BIENALSUR (Argentina), Foto México (Mexico) and Photoespaña (Spain).
His photographs have been published in magazines such as El País Semanal, Vogue UK, Harper’s Bazaar and M le magazine du Monde, as well as in specialised media such as Babelia, El Cultural, GUP Magazine, Dienacht Magazine, L’oeil de la Photographie and 30y3 Spanish Photography. He has been recognised in competitions such as the FOAM Paul Huf Award, Photoespaña discoveries, Tokyo International Photography Award, PDN Award, Voies Off Arles, the FotoPres La Caixa grant, the Santa María de Albarracín Foundation grant for Photography and the Basque Government grant for Plastic Arts.
