Valyunque, Maravillosa soledad

“Bachelard said that “the house is a body of images that give man reasons or illusions of stability”. The time and life of Martín Chirino (1925-2019) are reflected in the different houses and spaces where he has lived and worked, from his birthplace in La Isleta (Puerto de La Luz) to his last home in Valyunque, in the Tajuña Valley (1995), between Morata and Chinchón. The life of our sculptor, from the moment he left the island to settle in Madrid (1955), has been a continuous ascent, from the sands of his Canary Island, passing through the small hill of San Sebastián de los Reyes (El Yunque, 1960), up to the heights where their last refuge sits.” Thus begins the text by Antonio González that introduces Valyunque, Wonderful Solitude.

Almost without realizing it, Aldai's poetic capacity manages to take away the banality of these scenarios that he shows us. We know that each of his images results from a slow process of searching for the correct point of view until, little by little, the place becomes the central figure of the event, the epicenter of a complex harmonic composition. But we also know that the search, this struggle does not end with the click of the shutter. A part of it will always remain in the negative, in the copy.

Ángel Luis Aldai, tireless defender of the communicative power of photography, is fascinated by the possibilities of the medium to go beyond everyday reality, and achieves a "personal universe"; spaces that place the organization of visual elements taken from nature at the center of observation. In this case, portraying the poetics of these forgotten objects and empty spaces in the artist's house and his workshop, after his departure.