Bleda and Rosa at Museo ICO in Madrid

01/06/2023

Tipologías. Domus. Pompeya, 2008. © Bleda y Rosa, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023

As part of the PHotoESPAÑA festival program, Museo ICO in Madrid is through 10 September hosting the largest retrospective to date on Bleda and Rosa, leading figures in contemporary Spanish photography who have been working together for three decades. Organized by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with Fundación ICO, the exhibition walks us through the exceptional career of María Bleda (Castellón 1969) and José María Rosa (Albacete 1970), winners of the 2008 National Photography Prize, who have centered their work around landscapes and architecture as spaces of history and memory. Curated by Marta Dahó, the show takes the form of a video installation showing the entirety of their oeuvre through 264 images from nine photo series: Football Pitches, Battlefields, Cities, Rooms, Memorials, Typologies, Origin, Corporations, Promptuarium. Their approach starts from an interrogative dimension, as a tool for expression, inquiry, and experimentation. The deviation from their usual way of presenting photographic projects to the use of video installations is in itself a mark of the artistic duo, known to constantly question its own work and subject it to revision.