site.btaRebel of Spanish Photography, Alberto Garcia-Alix, Displays Works in Sofia

Spanish photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix will have a one-artist exhibition at the Sofia City Art Gallery from June 6 to July 14 during the FotoFabrika Festival. The exhibition is called What the Eyes Don't See. It takes a tour through the career of Alberto Garcia-Alix, tracing his development as a photographer through different periods, formats, and techniques, the organizers say.

The artist will attend the opening of his exhibition on June 6. He will stay in Sofia for a few more days to lead a workshop for Bulgarian photographers.

The exhibition includes 50 specially selected shots from various series by Garcia-Alix. Among them are some of his earliest photographs from the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as many newer ones.

The black-and-white colour scheme, from which Garcia-Alix never strays, speaks of rebellion and fast living, to which we are condemned, but also of the tenderness and romance of the path we inevitably follow. And this path connects us with an invisible thread to all the others embarking on their journeys, the gallery management says.

Alberto Garcia-Alix was born in Leon, Spain in 1956. At the age of 11, he moved to Madrid with his family, where he still lives today. His first attempts at photography date back to 1976, and his first exhibitions were in the 1980s in Madrid and London. One of his most famous exhibitions was the retrospective display shown at the first edition of PhotoEspana in 1998. A year later, he received the National Photography Award of Spain. In 2019, he won the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

He has had solo exhibitions in London, Beijing, Moscow and Paris as well as Latin America. His works are part of the collections of some of the world's largest museums and galleries, including Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Spain), Fonds National d'Art Contemporain (France), and Deutsche Boerse (Germany).

For years, Garcia-Alix has combined photography with publishing activities. He is the creator of the cultural magazine El Canto de la Creacion (1989–1997) and co-founder of the publishing house Cabeza de Chorlito.

He is also one of the leading figures in the cultural movement La Movida Madrilena (The Madrid Scene), with some of his photographs capturing exciting moments from the movement’s early years, among whose members are/were film director and screenwriter Pedro Almodovar, actresses Rossy de Palma and Emma Suarez, and flamenco singer Camaron de la Isla.

The FotoFabrika Festival at the Sofia City Art Gallery presents the best examples of contemporary photography. The FotoFabrika Foundation invites the spectator to become a doer and rework the events happening in the world through their own personal perspective, and thus, through the visual arts to provoke thought, emotion, and action.