Chema Alvargonzález

Jerez de la Frontera, 1960 - Berlín, 2009

As a multidisciplinary artist, he approached his creative proposals from both Berlin and Barcelona, the two cities where he resided until his death in 2009. He studied painting and multimedia at the Escola Massana in Barcelona (1985-1988) and later at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin (1989-1992), where he studied for a Master’s degree in Multimedia Fine Arts (1992-1993) with Rebecca Horn as his professor.

His works, of a markedly conceptual nature, alternate above all photography, installations and sculpture. His interventions on buildings, installations involving neon lights and light boxes are some of the media Alvargonzález used to present his work, always set around a common axis: light-words-forms-architecture-spectator.Behind his work there is always a profound research process, with references to sociology, philosophy or anthropology. Urban spaces and the role of man in today’s society are fundamental concerns of this artist, based on which he experiments with natural or artificial light. Light played an important role in his artistic production; he used it as a medium to reflect on today’s society and the very progression of humankind. The artist declared that he started out from intuition understood as light that illuminates paths that were dark.

He was the founder of the GlogauAIR workshop, where international artists temporarily live and work in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood of Berlin. He produced installations on the façades of buildings as emblematic as the Spanish Embassy in Berlin (1992), Munich Airport (2000), the Swiss Embassy in Berlin (2001), Milan Centrale Railway Station (2003), the Hotel Amister in Barcelona (2004) and the Telefónica Building in Madrid (2007). His work has been exhibited in numerous art centres: Casal Solleric (Palma de Mallorca, 2001), CaixaForum (Barcelona, 2002), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (2003), Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (2008), Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma (2008) and Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2011), among others. His work forms part of the collections of museums and entities such as the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, for example, as well as Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Malaga, Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes or Fundación Aena.

E.B.