Horts by Victoria Campillo: simple garden sheds recall the work of the great contemporary artists.

Elena Minguela

24 julio 2013

After observing in detail the small sheds situated on garden plots in the Baix Llobregat area of Barcelona, Victoria Campillo set a relation between them and the principles of Art Brut. These structures have been erected by the owners of the plots themselves and often in a very rudimentary way. Campillo’s observations became the inspiration for a series of photographs where she has ‘named’ the structures after famous artists. Titled ‘Horts’, it has just won the ArtFad Gold prize, an award promoted by the association of artists and artisans from Catalonia A-Fad.

With two basic principles in mind, basic and modest construction together with accumulation and repetition, she selected and photographed a hundred of these structures that brim in creative spontaneity and resolutive building. Campillo then connected each one to the work of contemporary artist, creating a series of visual references under the motto ‘From the point of view of an artist, art is everything’.

Landscape, agriculture, ‘homemade’ architecture, art and sociology are the project’s five core concepts. It was guided by establishing a framework of similarities, and invites the viewer to discover the various layers of the photograph’s topics: a landscape, an historic reference to art, a sign of human activity or an evidence to a social phenomena.

In this way, these ‘shacks’, which dot the semi-rural landscapes of Sant Boi del Llobregat, Sant Feliu del Llobregat, Molins de Rei, Viladecans, Cervelló, Sant Andreu de la Barca and Pallejà, enter into different worlds: the surrealism of Miró, Picasso‘s Cubism, the Dadaism of Marcel Duchamp, Mondrian‘s neoplasticism and even a portrait of Yoko Ono.  

As the artist says, the objective was to capture the ‘horticultural’ spirit that presides in working and transforming the land.

See all the images at: victoriacampillo.see.me/