Álvaro Martínez Alonso is a Spanish artist based in Berlin.
Álvaro completed his M.A. Master of Arts at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, including exchange programs studying also Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao (Spain) and Time-based Art at Burg Giebichenstein, Kunsthochschule of Halle (Germany).
He was recently awarded first prize at the Rotlicht Festival for Analog Photography in Vienna with his project The Berlin Archipelago. In recent years he has received awards and grants in different European countries. His work has been shown at Biennales (Mediterranea 16 Biennale- Ancona, Italy), festivals (LAN Festival Audiovisual Obrero – Bilbao), Galeries (100Kubik – Cologne), fairs (C.A.R Contemporary Art Ruhr – Essen) and other exhibition formats (Halle14 – Leipzig) in Germany, Spain, Austria, Poland, Italy, Argentina and Venezuela among others.
Based on his personal experiences, the context and relationships he lives, Álvaro approaches close issues of a social and even emotional nature, with which a wider audience can also identify themselves
He usually works with documentary images focusing on the implicit meaning that can be given to them using visual metaphors, stereotypes and other rhetorical tools.
Álvaro Martínez Alonso is represented by the gallery 100Kubik in Cologne, Germany.
The Berlin Archipelago
THE BERLIN ARCHIPELAGO
In the spring of 2020, during a tough lockdown and widespread border closures, I set out to escape the city without leaving it, exploring different worlds and enjoying fabulous travels without having to cross the world.
The Berlin Archipelago shows a hidden side of the German capital, on the outskirts of the big city: 70 natural, artificial and even floating islands emerging between rivers and lakes, surrounded by thick forests and where the cement has not yet arrived.
This context attracts Berliners looking to get away for a day from the hectic routine of the big city, but there are also those who have made it their way of life by settling on small pieces of land, voluntarily isolated, surrounded by water.
This archipelago also hides uninhabited islands, protected natural environments where fauna and flora coexist in harmony.
Sailing between islands, we discover what is close to us; a hundred islanders organized as a republic, an unnamed island inhabited by artists, schoolchildren on ferries traveling to their island school, ruins in forgotten places, luxurious villas with a shady past, paradisiacal beaches and private parties on the other side of the shore; 21st century pirates and outsiders reluctant to make contact, the smell of summer, the sensation of freedom.
The Berlin Archipelago links cartography, documentary photography and archival in a journey to the periphery of the city, where small communities have settled and adapted their life project to the particular conditions of the environment.
To view more of Álvaro Martínez Alonso’s work please visit their website.