Art is the physical expression of our spirit. The human experience is a constant interplay between the outside world (the medium) and the inside world (the mind). These elements are in a constant state of influencing each other. We influence the medium with our feelings, sensations and emotions and the medium influences us. Therefore, art can be defined as an expression of a space of thought, as art is the way in which materialize the part of our being that is known only to ourselves.
The question of how the world shapes the mind is one that can create a lot of answers and discussions, but one thing is definitely sure: our minds are a complex system where biology, sociology, religion, philosophy and many other fields meet. We all are influenced in different ways by these, which come into contact with a unique structure that has been laid out and which is in a constant change.
There is no singular truth when it comes to the architecture of the soul.
Just like a building is a place that has a structure in which things are added, edited, taken out and influenced by nature, so is the human mind a home for our thoughts, feelings and emotions.
In this sense, Urbex, short for Urban Exploration, which is one of the main themes at Live Arts this season, is a great tool to dig deep inside the structures that compose not only our immediate environment, but also the structures of the mind. Urbex photographers explore places that are hard to access and which are a combination of a series of events, dashed with a layer of nature. Urbex is about the incursion in accessible places and the reveal of the elements that construct these places; it is about what remains in time.
Urbex is also a great photographic endeavor from a sociologic and anthropologic point of view: it is proof that the physical things that we know to be around us, which often seem obvious, do change and morph into something else. Also, it is a good way of contemplating on the fact that the past, the present (and now the future) are all in one place.
Photographs, painters, sculptors and other artists that explore the secret world hidden inside our backyards, but also a world beyond our own may they be urban exploration photography, street photography, or what we love to call fine art documentary photography, both document, inform and explore in artistic ways the things that compose the world: our medium and its impact on human beings, our inner mental structures and the way in which our souls experiment and navigate the world.
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