Galeria Estiarte presents the latest project from Lidia Benavides carried out in the solar platform of almeria during 2007 which, via different works for video and photography, shows her approach to the possibilities and applications of solar energy.

The latest work from Lidia Benavides (Madrid, 1971), titled The Sun Oven, was carried out during 2007 in the Solar Platform of Almería, a facility coming under the Ministry of Education and Science and located in the middle of the Tabernas Desert in Almería. There the artist carried out fieldwork interviewing the research staff and paying several visits to the site in order to transfer all the latest advances in solar energy to her plastic universe. Finally, the work of Benavides in the Solar Platform has led to a series of different works for video and photography: "The Solar Platform of Almería has various lines of investigation open on different projects started up by other German and Spanish investigation teams. Solar ovens, heliostats, purifying plants, prototypes of energy saving buildings, food dehydrators or the incredible solar concentration tower have allowed me to bring to my world an enormous world of plastic resources constructed by light and aims to give an idea of the immense potential of the many different applications of solar energy", says Lidia Benavides.

A project which, in my opinion, --says Francisco Carpio in the text in the catalogue-- undertakes a new line of work, less abstract and plastic, but undoubtedly more energetic; a genuine turn of the screw to the glance that she has always thrown, fascinated, towards the fascinating luminous universe ... Within this Sun Oven which Lidia proposes to us, a series of new pieces are cooked and baked in the slow fire of investigation, fascination and curiosity, pieces which have to be served hot and golden as sunlight.

Among them is a photo-installation of the same title which I find especially outstanding, composed of a mosaic of photographic images as if they were the rectangular scales of an unusual metallic skin of gold. Images that are the reflection of the sun in the silver mirrors of the Sun Oven itself. Duality of symbols and concepts. A specular syntax that also turns out to be visually spec(tac)ular. Each of these cells/fragments, which in themselves have an autonomous plastic value, is generated starting from videographic stills which, in the same way as an enormous roasted mirror, have recorded the gestures, forms, lights and shadows, being reflected on their silver waters, heating them, making them golden. An attractive play of rhythms, undulations and perceptive presences are thus created which aim to capture the movement flowing along that surface with its almost aquatic appearance. An attempt, therefore, to fix the changing drawing of time - Jean Cocteau dixit - and deposit it on the static extent of a mirror.

This work has its evident correlation in a video with three channels which, via their electric pupils, launch images analogous to those of the photo-installation. Here our eye/eyes only needs/need to travel through a triple landscape to enter into these solar mountainscapes, at the same time it/they gathers/gather and enlarges/enlarge logistic and operational information on what is - literally - cooking inside that Big Brother - Big Sun Oven.

These are works which in many cases are to be found exploring a frontier territory between abstraction and figuration, a semi-referential limes which gives way to other works which now openly correspond to the genealogy of the figurative. I think like that about the light-boxes and the series of photographs that are exhibited, presenting and representing different referential elements of that genuine Sci-Fi scenery unfurled by the Solar Platform. Scenes that are therefore close to science-fiction and to the hypertechnological visual registers, as is the presence of the Eurodish, a kind of gigantic cybernetic sunflower, designed and produced in Germany which, as with the flower itself, rhythmically rotates after the sun, following all the angles that will permit it to capture as much sunlight as possible in its silver mirror", finish Carpio

About Lidia Benavides

Her work was selected in Circuits of Plastic Arts and Photography in its 1999 edition, which travelled the cities of Stuttgart, Munich and Berlin. It was selected in Generation 2005 by Caja Madrid, in the Extraordinary Award for Photography of the AENA Foundation in 2005, in the I Biennial of ONCE in 2006, in the selection of the Altadis Award 2006 and in the exhibitions Supraficciones organised by the La Caixa Foundation in 2007 and The last Painting Show, curated by Paco Barragán in Miami in 2007. In 2006 her work was chosen by Rosa Olivares in the book 100 Fotógrafos Españoles, published by Exit. He work is to be found among the collections of Caja Burgos, Circa XXI Collection of Pilar Citoler, Munich Re Collection, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as in the National Library of Spain and in the Spanish Parliament. Notable among the publications devoted to her work are texts from the curators and critics Mariano Navarro, Rosa Olivares, Francisco Carpio, Oscar Alonso Molina, Chema de Francisco, Paco Barragán, Creixell Espilla and Ricardo Echevarría.