FRAN RODRÍGUEZ CASAL




patios de luz
da túa man para a miña
birdsong
do outro lado


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Birdsong is a photographic work created on the island of Inis Meáin, conceived as an exploration of the oceanic feeling. Cultures such as the Galician and Portuguese —melancholic, saturnine peoples, oriented toward the setting sun— express with clarity this struggle of infinities: on one side, the idea of the continent; on the other, the sea, appearing in its vastness, its remoteness, its blurred perception, its call summoning the imagination. An imagination marked by the beyond, by the Alén. A crossroads between land and water: the liquid against the solid. Emptiness is defined by edges, by boundaries, by the margins. The Atlantic gaze. A watchtower from which to witness the unfolding of time.

Forms are subject to continuous change, to the principle of metamorphosis, in which all is constantly renewed. The sea crashes against the rock. It erodes the land. The liquid rises: an oblique rain, freed from gravity, falls upon our heads. The sea enters the land. Offerings imbued with expressive telluric force and intense drama, as if springing from within a tortured material.

There is a search for sensory fullness through fragments, scraps, sonic echoes. Time suspended in the thickness of the image. A stripping away of the narrative structure and of conventional language. A lifting of weight from human figures. A descent into the inner world of sensation.

Drawn to the history of the islands and their traditions, I focused on the idea of the limit through its absence—an absence that generates a powerful sense of totality. Nothingness and infinity merge when the field of perception is covered by a full presence. At times, everything seems to vanish. What remains is the sound of the sea, the wind, and the birds.