Jorge Ribalta divides his time between working as an artist, an exhibition curator, a critic (he is a regular contributor to the La Vanguardia newspaper), a writer and a cultural activist. He has written a major book called Servicio Público. Conversaciones sobre financiación pública y arte contemporáneo (UAAV - University of Salamanca, 1998) and worked as Head of Public Programmes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (1999-2009). These are all essential facets of his biography, as is his political questioning of the uses of and mechanisms for documentary records, with photography playing a core role. The exhibition 'Monumentmaschine' ['Machine Monument'] at the José Guerrero Centre in Granada (2014) is a highlight of his career as an artist. Highlights of his writing career include his publications Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografía (2004) and Historias de la fotografía española. Escritos, 1977-2004 (2009). His most important work as a curator is in the thesis expositions Processos documentals. Imatge testimonial, subalternitat i esfera pública (La Capella, 2001), Una luz dura, sin compasión. El movimiento de la fotografía obrera, 1926- 1939 (MNCARS, 2011) and Aún no (MNCARS, 2015).
In his output as an artist, Ribalta uses small, analogue photographs, mostly in black and white. Each separate image is meaningful only as part of a set of photos with juxtaposed semantic features. He thus draws up a simile with the setting up of an exhibition as the translation and interpretation of images in a choral sense, and film montages: 'Photography is part of things. It is a fossil, but the montage brings the images into relation with one another and returns them to life. This montage of images hints at the illusion of movement produced in film. Placing images together involves not only linking the different processes and tasks shown and making them legible, but also setting the images themselves in motion. Giving life to stones is creating an illusion of movement'.
Ribalta has staged solo exhibitions at the University of Salamanca (2006), the José Guerrero Centre (Granada, 2015) and the Helga de Alvear Foundation (Cáceres, 2015).
Jorge Ribalta divides his time between working as an artist, an exhibition curator, a critic (he is a regular contributor to the La Vanguardia newspaper), a writer and a cultural activist. He has written a major book called Servicio Público. Conversaciones sobre financiación pública y arte contemporáneo (UAAV - University of Salamanca, 1998) and worked as Head of Public Programmes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (1999-2009). These are all essential facets of his biography, as is his political questioning of the uses of and mechanisms for documentary records, with photography playing a core role. The exhibition 'Monumentmaschine' ['Machine Monument'] at the José Guerrero Centre in Granada (2014) is a highlight of his career as an artist. Highlights of his writing career include his publications Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografía (2004) and Historias de la fotografía española. Escritos, 1977-2004 (2009). His most important work as a curator is in the thesis expositions Processos documentals. Imatge testimonial, subalternitat i esfera pública (La Capella, 2001), Una luz dura, sin compasión. El movimiento de la fotografía obrera, 1926- 1939 (MNCARS, 2011) and Aún no (MNCARS, 2015).
In his output as an artist, Ribalta uses small, analogue photographs, mostly in black and white. Each separate image is meaningful only as part of a set of photos with juxtaposed semantic features. He thus draws up a simile with the setting up of an exhibition as the translation and interpretation of images in a choral sense, and film montages: 'Photography is part of things. It is a fossil, but the montage brings the images into relation with one another and returns them to life. This montage of images hints at the illusion of movement produced in film. Placing images together involves not only linking the different processes and tasks shown and making them legible, but also setting the images themselves in motion. Giving life to stones is creating an illusion of movement'.
Ribalta has staged solo exhibitions at the University of Salamanca (2006), the José Guerrero Centre (Granada, 2015) and the Helga de Alvear Foundation (Cáceres, 2015).