Roberto Rubalcava
Away from the Light (2015 - 2020), Roberto Rubalcava.
Away from the Light is an ongoing experimental object shooting in film in low light conditions. The series documents Rubalcava’s nocturnal wanderings into isolated and off-limit realms such as breaking the curfew to find a row of abandoned cinema seats in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone or venturing into a dilapidated hospital in The Netherlands. As if hunting with a camera, the series exudes a sense of discovery, danger, and transgression, propelled by the artist’s desire to push the limits of what is accessible and make darkness visible. Unexpected subjects and scenery are exposed from the velvety darkness, often only to be revealed when the film roll is processed.
The series is fascinated by the tension between human activity and nature - witnessed in the derelict house taken over by branches or the footprints and tyre tracks leading through the snow into deep Austrian mountainside. Environmental conditions such as snow, ice or fog are adapted for aesthetic and practical purposes in diffusing what light is available. The natural world is portrayed as having its own character and energy - a field of sunflowers in Andalusia dangle their heads as they loom from the darkness just as grimaces of wild horses which have returned to the now uninhabitable areas of Ukraine are caught by the shimmering flashbulb.
The recurring imagery of cemeteries, gravestones, and church interiors pepper the series with existential questions surrounding death and religion as Rubalcava reflects emotions and experiences which have shaped his life. The artist returns to the conflicting feelings of awe and dread he felt as a child when visiting a confession booth and hearing bodiless voices emerge. These photographs are positioned alongside voyeuristic portraits of anonymous dancers and circus performers contorting their bodies. Captured in an intimate chiaroscuro echoing the grotesque theatricality of religious art whits challenging the prejudicial censorship of sexuality within the Catholic Church.
Rubalcava is drawn to locations which invite isolation and meditative repose. Void-like spaces are depicted with a raw, almost philosophical honesty. The entrance to an empty cave in Portugal and the murky waters of an abandoned swimming pool in Sayulita, Mexico draw the viewer’s eye into seemingly infinite blackness. As the artist looks up to photograph a window of the sky from the bottom of a cenote in Tulum, light offers an assertion of wisdom and truth. The dramatic interplay of reflection and shadow expresses the high drama of sunlight in Mexico - an elemental force which has had a powerful aesthetic impact on Rubalcava’s creative perspective and journey as a photographer.