Works

Portraits

2023

Archival Pigment Print
Variable Sizes
You Are Here (Group Exhibition)
The Platform/ Gallery, Antwerp

This series delves into the enigmatic discovery of an old family photo album, shedding light on its neglected contents and the compelling visual narrative that emerges from its abandoned state.

Instead of human subjects, the album's physical attributes take on a newfound significance, becoming the focal point of the visual narrative; such as mold growth, water stains, broken frames, and faded linings, which now take center stage as subjects in their own right.

Through the use of analog medium format photography, each empty frame becomes a reproduction, capturing the essence of the album's silent yet evocative story. This visual exploration seeks to evoke a sense of intrigue and contemplation, inviting viewers to engage with the album's forgotten history and the significance of its neglected imagery.

Prospective Pour le 22e Siècle

2023

Off-set Print
70 x 80 cm
Edition of 300
CCINQ Gallery, Brussels

Prospective: noun, concerning the future evolution of society, permitting elements of forecasting.

In 1967, François Bayle and Pierre Henry created ‘Prospective 21e Siècle’, a collection devoted to musique concrète and electroacoustic, electronic, and avant-garde composers for the French label Philips. Fifty-five years later, we invited Vica Pacheco and Miguel Rózpide to reflect together on a possible 22nd century prospective.

At the end of the sixties, the future was often fantasised about. Future-oriented thinking was the norm and 'art music' was reaching a new audience who were already aware of avant-garde sounds and improvisation by artists like Soft Machine and Frank Zappa.

Between 1967 and 1977, the collection was characterised by the idea of an art resolutely centred on anticipation and modernity with a desire to understand and question the future. As part of an experimental process, we asked visual artist Miguel Rózpide to think of a unique image that would be published as posters. During these 3 evenings of performance, the audience is invited to take the print home with them as a mark of a moment in time.

Miguel Rózpide's visual approach lies in a place where the difference between environment and subject is defined. His images pay particular attention to what happens there, they enrich the ordinary and undoubtedly evoke an atmosphere, whether warm or sterile. There are places, objects, people or animals, and colours that envelop them. The palette is restricted, sometimes even sombre, and the images are realistic whilst flirting with abstraction. In Rózpide's work —as in the colour field painting movement— colour is freed from its figurative functions and invites itself into the frame as a subject.

Here, Miguel Rózpide’s image is quite different, at least in its initial appearance. The subject is an unplugged incubator, placed in a neutral grey space, under the sharp lights of a photography studio.

This is an industrially-formatted image; it's timeless but dated, inhabiting a formal dimension where the object is the photograph. It evokes a certain idea of a consumer society where "beauty is born from the balance between form and function" (Formes Utiles - UAM).

Is this "neutral" proposed by Rózpide evoking a kind of "not yet", a thought at the edge of language, a superposition of matching tones?
What does this incubator, which protects the baby from the cold because it is not yet mature enough to regulate its temperature, say to us? What does this tone-on-tone tell us?

No matter what Vica Pacheco's sources of inspiration and concerns are, she definitely has a taste for hybridization. When producing sound installations, she likes to confront the most heterogeneous elements existing between field recordings and manipulated voices. She creates an atmosphere, a place transformed, a science fiction soundtrack and, of course, prospective research. The recognizable sounds speak to us as if they were the present being transformed. The story is this: we do not come from nothing, we remember. In an almost cinematographic narration we make a journey, we extrapolate, we move forward. It’s a journey to the beyond, between utopia, space-opera, and an alternate history.

For three days at CCINQ Vica Pacheco will experiment with detailed recordings in and around the incubator object-subject of the poster. Pacheco will freely imagine a world set apart by means of sound design, and will present the results of her research each evening. The three performances will bring conceptualism, confusion and recognition, and transforming art through the links between artists into question. The audience knows that it's not about the real world, it's about research that could lead us to an escape, to a better world.

Finally, viewers will be able to take the physical production home with them, allowing its reactivation and reconfiguration outside of CCINQ. They will also leave with an immaterial element, an echo of the world transformed into what it is not (or not yet), a distancing one can appreciate.

Written by Patrick Carpentier

Portraits

2023

Archival Pigment Prints
30 x 30 cm / 70 x 90 cm
Sint-Lukas Galerie, Brussels

From I to 0 uses first experiences of different people as a starting point. Using a conceptual approach, this project aims to increase the dynamics between audience and author by visualizing emotions and by investigating the duality that ensues from differences in interpretation.

Society is thought to be socially constructed through human interpretation. People interpret each other’s behaviour, and these interpretations form the social bond. As a result, the artist can imagine and interpret these experiences without being hindered by their social and cultural background.

By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Miguel Rózpide tries to approach a wide range of subjects in a multi-layered way, involving the viewer in a physical and spiritual way. Images and text are confronted while being interrelated through memory and projection.

For the First Time

2019

Archival pigment Print
40 x 40 cm
The Loop
Art Residency w/ Bonfire
Brussels, Blegium

The first time someone experiences something significant can have a profound and lasting impact on their life. This initial encounter often shapes their perceptions, attitudes, and future experiences.

The first time someone engages in an activity or experiences an event, it often becomes a vivid and memorable memory. These initial experiences can be imprinted deeply in one's mind, creating a lasting impression that may influence future decisions and behaviors.

The first time someone does something is crucial because it lays the groundwork for future experiences, influences personal development, and contributes to the formation of memories and habits. These initial encounters play a pivotal role in shaping an individual's perspective and navigating their life journey.

The Repeated Image

2019

Piezography Print
Handmade oak frames & Museum Glass
30 x 40 cm
Antwerp, Blegium

In this first group of works from The Repeated Image, Miguel Rózpide selects photographs from his family archive that appear twice or almost twice. They show moments that repeat with a small shift in time or a change in angle. These tiny variations reveal how memory works, not as a single fixed point but as a series of almost identical moments that each carry their own small differences.

Each photograph has been rephotographed and printed using piezography in order to match the original tones of the archive. The process creates a precise copy of the image as it was found, and this accuracy highlights the delicate space between one version and the next.

Rózpide brings these near repetitions into dialogue with pairs of homophones. The words echo each other in sound yet move apart in meaning. When combined with the twin images, the connection between looking and reading becomes more open and uncertain. Language slips between clarity and ambiguity, just as the photographs slip between sameness and change. The viewer is invited to notice how small shifts in context can alter what an image or a word seems to say.

Across the five frames, this quiet play of images and words forms a clear and gentle structure. It invites attention to the slight movements that shape memory, to moments that repeat but never fully match, and to the unexpected meanings that appear when two almost identical things are placed side by side.