Damian Lajara opens the 2020 season at the Cristóbal Gabarrón Museum in Mula

The Casa Pintada Foundation presents next Thursday, January 30th at 7:30 pm the exhibition Pinhole Views by photographer Damian Lajara in Rooms 1 and 2 of the museum. Curated by the art critic and museologist, Juan García Sandoval, the exhibition can be visited until April 12, 2020.

This year 2020 is very special for many reasons, the Cristobal Gabarron Museum is celebrating its 15th anniversary, since H.R.H. The Prince and Princess of Asturias, today the King and Queen of Spain, inaugurated our facilities in Mula on June 8, 2005. On the other hand, Cristóbal Gabarrón was born on April 25th 1945, the same day that the delegates of 50 countries met in San Francisco to finish the writing of the United Nations Charter that was signed on June 26th in the same city. Therefore, this year marks a double milestone, the 75th anniversary of the birth of Cristobal Gabarron and the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, with whom the artist has maintained a fluid relationship since 1986. For the Casa Pintada Foundation it is a joy to begin this significant year, inaugurating in its museum in Mula, this exquisite, beautiful and magical exhibition by Damián Lajara, with whom his pinhole looks offer a very original and personal visual narrative. The portraits, urban landscapes and still lifes of Lajara that can be contemplated in this exhibition are of a great artistic quality, they reflect a spoiled, thought out, well elaborated scenario with the intention of telling a triple story, the one of the artist's look, the one of the represented character or landscape and the one of the exhibition's visitor. Portraits of people from the world of culture or politics, such as the artist Cristóbal Gabarrón; the mayor of Murcia, José Ballesta; the journalist Pedro Soler or the photographer María Manzanera, among others, which Lajara admires and appreciates. All of this is photographed with the pinhole technique, which began to be practiced in the nineteenth century and is characterized by the absence of lenses and targets. Pinhole cameras are usually handmade, they are built with cardboard boxes, tins, cans or any other artifact we can close the way to the light. It is a different exhibition from the ones we are not used to see in museums, however, this is the second time that pinhole photography enters the museum. In 2015, the World Day of Pinhole Photography was celebrated with a workshop, the subsequent development of photographs taken with pinhole cameras and their exhibition. José Damián Lajara Lucas (1952, Abanilla, Murcia, Spain) Damián Lajara, photographer and director, after studying ATS in 1972, moves to Barcelona. His first photographic works were portraits, and he went on to work for the New Top model agency; the magazines, Inventos y Tecnología, El mueble and Caravaning, and the magazine Bouquet. He edits his own photography magazine specializing in Bigudi fashion, reporting on artists such as Alaska, Bertín Osborne and José Carreras. In 2005, he moved to Murcia, where he produced for Televisión Murciana (TVM), La Opinión TV and Popular TV. He combines this with various photography and video art exhibitions in the region.