"Volver a imaginar": A Contemporary Photography Exhibition at Círculo de Bellas Artes

Volver a imaginar features thirteen artists experimenting with the photographic medium to explore new forms of representation. The exhibition questions themes of identity, authority, and territory through a diverse range of works including photo-sculptures and innovative series.

The exhibition "Volver a imaginar" showcases the work of thirteen artists who are reflecting on and reinterpreting the photographic medium in a period of significant transformation. These artists are exploring new ways to conceptualize and create photographic images, engaging with their material practice to question, explore, and dialogue with themes such as identity, authority, and territory, thereby continuing the re-conceptualization of representation in contemporary culture. The exhibition presents each artist's practice through a selection of photographs produced between unspecified dates, inviting viewers to closely examine their methods, processes, and artistic research. The resulting cosmology of images includes photo-sculptures, installations, innovative series, and photography presented as an aesthetic object. The artists engage with PHotoESPAÑA's themes of photographic creativity, experimentation, and the exploration of the image's limits. Some artists address the construction and deconstruction of identity and nationhood through territorial narratives, reflecting on the human condition and sociopolitical realities, or examining the psychologies between public space and constructed reality. Others analyze the relationship of photography with typologies and visual systems, such as cataloging citizen portraits or capturing the morphology of inhabitants in an era of constant movement, as well as inventorying industrial ruins that represent the passage of time, and creating networks of lexicons that index multiple fragments of history. Some artists rematerialize the photographic medium by expanding its materiality through various artistic processes, exploring the notion of an ephemeral image in constant transformation, allowing for exercises in perception, chance, metaphor, and time. Others develop an anthropology of images from historical documents obtained from diverse sources, reactivating the past to provide readings for the present and build a legacy for the future, thus exploring the complexities of our relationship with the world. "Volver a imaginar" offers new ways of seeing through the imagination of these extraordinary artists, who are true visionaries. Representing multiple narratives and temporalities, the photographs of these contemporary artists configure a shared visual experience that viscerally links the photographer and the viewer through the polymorphic manifestations of photography's unique qualities, thus offering both established and reinvented ways of appreciating this long-standing medium. This project also reflects PHotoESPAÑA PRO Talento a bordo program, bringing together artists selected in its first edition of 2026, and is part of the guest country section dedicated to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Tickets for the exhibition and rooftop access are available for €7. General exhibition entry is €6, with a reduced price of €5. Members of Círculo de Bellas Artes have free entry. Tickets can be purchased online via the provided link or at the box office during opening hours. An opening event with free entry will be held on June 5, 2026, at 13:00h. The exhibition is also part of the guest country program for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and features artists from PHotoESPAÑA PRO Talento a bordo program from 2026. Organized by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Spain, Mondriaan Fund, PHotoESPAÑA, and Círculo de Bellas Artes, with collaboration from Ilford Photo and Dugopa, and sponsorship from Iberia. The exhibition is presented in Sala Picasso.