"The hidden face of the things" Chema Madoz and the poetics of the transubstantiation.
Luis Arenas

Over the years, Chema Madoz has taken on a Herculean task. With a perseverance that he has transformed into his hallmark style, Madoz brings us into contact with the other possible worlds surrounding us, a universe of objects as familiar as they are unknown, as close to us as they are irreducibly strange. When did the photographer decide to become a sort of Hermes between these parallel worlds? At what moment did he realize that his work would be to tirelessly decipher messages from those places and objects that are close to us in space yet distant in the imagination? It must have been at a very early stage. And since then, attending any of his exhibitions or browsing through his catalogues can only be worthwhile if we accept from the start that we still do not know everything there is to know about the faithful servants who share our most private daily existence: the matches, cutlery, clocks or books that Madoz uses to emphasize the sort of dialectic complementarity existing between the categories of real and virtual.

This pair of concepts (real and virtual) is often presented in the form of a controversial opposition. By analogy with other distantly related oppositions (appearance/reality, potential/act, etc.), the real and the virtual seem to show an irresolvable tension, a frontal, insurmountable opposition. Whatever the truth of this opposition, however, it should not hide the complementarity that can still be found between both terms. The ubiquitous presence of information technologies and their generalized use of the term "virtual" - often to mean "unreal", "apparent", "simulated", or "fictitious" - run the risk of silencing need for fire or for conquering gravity. All of Madoz's worlds are obviously improbable but not impossible (ab esse ad posse valet illatio); there they are, right in front of us to demonstrate their reality.

Perhaps this is why the objects in Madoz's photographs are inflicted by an exquisitely human tension: the harrowing tension of not being all that they might have been, of having forgotten - who knows if due to cowardice or simply the nature of things - other possible, or virtual, existences. We have learned about some of these lives not lived thanks to Madoz's photographs; he has told us about the scissors that wanted to be the Concorde, about the stone that dreamed of being a cactus, about the sand that wanted to be water and the desert that dreamed of the rain or about the modest hairpin that was willing to become a tear . That is the reason behind the infinite sympathy and solidarity these objects inspire in us. The anomaly that Madoz's world still happily preserves is similar to a mid-week holiday: people have taken off the clothing in which we are used to seeing them and are engaged in tasks other than their habitual ones. Everything is momentarily suspended and awaits the return to the order of daily life. Thus in his photographs Madoz's objects also enjoy a day off when they can live other improbable transitory lives, and surprise us with qualities and profiles we were unaware of. In these shots, objects rebel against their sentence of being mere utensils. But there is nothing threatening in their rebellion; it is primarily playful, a childish prank. Madoz seems to invite us to listen to the secret dialogue things carry on behind our backs. As if only he had sharp enough hearing to capture their playful laughter, issued daily. After visiting a Chema Madoz exhibition or closing one of his books, we sleep like children: with the suspicion that as soon as we close our eyes, things will begin their own weekend: the time when we can finally be and do anything we want to. Spanish version