About the artist:
Graduated in Fine Arts and Psychology, Vallhonrat is a photographer, multidisciplinary artist and researcher. He also gives courses and seminars on the process of artistic creation at different universities and institutions.
In the 1980s and after a successful period as a fashion photographer he put his own creativity under the microscope as a way to critically analyse the modern artistic discourse. As result of how he rigorously explores new territories, in the 1990s he became a prominent figure in the world of photography and also in the Spanish artistic scene.
Over the last two decades, the artist has shown interest in the relationship between human beings and nature, focusing on vulnerability and uncertainty, on experiences that seem to get lost in modern society, where control and prediction are only an unrealistic attempt to tame nature. His projects - developed in natural environments defined by geophysical and meteorological conditions - explore experiential phenomenal aspects, being the notions of route, permanence, fragment, context and process the recurring themes in his work.
If the works he created between 2010 and 2016 were conceived as "forms of knowledge, experience and language", his most recent project ("La sombre incisa", 2016-2018) has been carried out as an emotional and symbolic "form of relationship" to the unique Madaleta glacier in the Pyrenees, in southern Europe.
In an accelerated time where instantaneousness and virtuality play a key role, the artist works with the slowness and experience of the physicality required when standing on the edge of the glacier for a long period of time - a childish, poetical and absurd gesture while simultaneously capturing the logs, routes and permanence of this particular body that is inevitably bound to disappear.
Vallhonrat has won many different awards such as the National Photography Award by the Spanish Ministry of Culture (1995), the Award of Excellence by the Society of Newspaper Design (USA), the Silver Award of New York Times Magazine (USA, 1994), the Art Directors Club 76th Annual Awards (USA), the Bartolomé Ros PhotoEspaña Award (2007), the City of Madrid Photography Award (2009), the Photography Award by the Autonomous Region of Madrid (2009) and the ENAIRE Award for his artistic career (2018), amongst others.