Every morning, early, Xavi Bou’s grandfather (Barcelona, ??1979) would go for a walk through the Llobregat Delta and return with a list that seemed almost as magical to his grandson as the cabinets of curiosities that collected the exotic finds later appeared to him. in remote parts of the world. The list contained the number of bird species, the movements and capers seen that day. When he was the right age, the grandson joined the walks: “I saw that there were many types of species that flew differently, that sang differently, that they were not the same all year round, and that’s where my curiosity about Nature began,” he says. .
The result of his fascination with the movement of birds is the series of Ornithographies images, with which he captivates a growing public and number of collectors. His works have appeared in media such as National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Geo and Sonntag, in addition to starring in exhibitions in Germany, Belgium, Russia, Canada and Mexico. In Spain, from his workshop in the Gracia neighborhood, he has gone through different festivals, calls for institutions and group exhibitions, and now he presents his first individual exhibition at the Senda gallery.
Although he uses the techniques of photography and video – he establishes a connection between his research and chronophotography – his work transcends the vocation of documenting Nature. After finishing his degree in Geology at the University of Barcelona, ??he was more attracted to continuing studying photography at the Grisart school than ending up in the construction sector.
While he had his own retouching workshop, where he worked for major advertising and fashion brands, the need to express his obsessions in an artistic project grew, until twelve years ago the idea appeared: “I thought why not work with Nature. I had always been the weird one who was listening to the birds, or following the tracks of animals in the ground or observing the droppings.” He found his way “to contribute a grain of sand to a cabinet of contemporary curiosities.”
Between science, art and technique, and with the help of algorithms, he records on video the activity of birds that he sometimes only intuits. The landscape loses importance, because it tends to be just the white canvas that his admired Myong Ho Lee places to portray the trees. Numerous superimposed frames reproduce the calligraphy of the flight and Xavi Bou limits himself to “acting as a curator who goes in search of the choreographies that the birds trace and makes them visible. And with birds that are with us, very close, that fly above us, and that many people do not see because they do not look at the sky.” It is his way of reclaiming Nature and denouncing our ignorance about the movements of birds, their sounds and their names.
Xavi Bou Ornithographies. Footprints in the sky. Senda Gallery. Barcelona. www.senda.com Until June 21
