Albarrán Cabrera
"Things Come Slowly"

Exhibition: 24 March – 21 May, 2022
Opening: Thursday, 24 March, 6pm - 9pm

"Life passes at the speed of a bird's cry.
And then there is this hypnotic slowness of the clouds.
This open chest in the blue
and this snowy heart that offers itself to our heart."
– Christian Bobin, Un bruit de balançoire, 2017

For the spring season, the exhibition "Things Come Slowly" invites you to enter the meditative work of the Spanish duo Albarrán Cabrera. It is their first exhibition in the Geneva gallery.

In a form of apology for slowness, Angel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera question the limits of the photographic medium, while seeking to overcome them. Their work is placed under the sign of permanent metamorphosis and of a back and forth movement among the photographic techniques that make up its structure.

The artist duo first built their reputation with collectors around the world through the technique of pigment prints on Japanese gampi paper over gold leaf or the addition of mica and acrylics.

Alternative processes such as cyanotype and platinum-palladium or toned silver halide: this slow work has been progressively enriched by constant experimentation. It is in the intimacy of their studio that the photographic couple nourish their work with repeated gestures and that the magic works. The harmony at the heart of their creation extends into the images themselves. Turned towards contemplation, towards the vibration of the ephemeral, their photographs, of great aesthetic refinement, are encounters with the other side of the world.

This slowness of gaze, which is very much a part of Japanese culture, has an incantatory quality that creates the unusual atmosphere in which their images are bathed. In Japan, we are resigned because we know that time possessed us.

Text: Elisa Bernard

Both born in 1969 and living in Barcelona, Albarrán Cabrera (Anna Cabrera et Angel Albarrán) have been working together since 1996 and form a rising duo on the photographic scene. Together, they have developed a photographic universe where the poetic of the subject meets the beauty of the print. Experts in a wide range of photographic printing processes, Albarrán Cabrera see their photographs as objects in their own right. Thus, they personally handcraft their prints in their studio using a wide range of processes and materials, such as cyanotype emulsion, platinum-palladium, silver gelatin, among others. Their application of gold leaves under handmade Japanese paper give their photos a deep, mysterious glow, an enigmatic spectrum of light that reverberates through the image. Questioning concepts like identity, time, memories, their various open series evoke our relationship with time and memory and our perception of the photographic image between reality and illusion.