Shared Visual Memory (Memorare)

Memorare (1) was born from images of a snowfall. The sky and the earth blended into a light grey background, and the tree trunks, depending on the point of view, created different shapes in a boundless space. While this experience was being lived in the village of La Guixa, Toni Casassas experienced it in Stockholm, where he was studying. The interprofessional work project of photography and painting was born from exchanging images and ideas by post.

The following summer, the two of us met in a rural community (2) in Berguedà, where Toni Casassas had created two ephemeral installations (3): a set of stone pillars in the middle of a stream and a dead tree trunk, painted white, positioned in the centre of an esplanade. We photographed the two scenes from several different points of view and in various lighting conditions.

In the final works, images were merged using photographs, pictorial sketches and found objects (stones, logs or animal skeletons) creating large panels in the form of coffin lids. Without being particularly conscious of it, we immersed ourselves in a work of memory (4), the remembrance of summer and the many summers we had spent together in those spaces. And with the name Memorare (to remember in Latin), some remembrances were “buried” inside a Roman temple.