COMEL AWARD FINALISTS

Miguel Auria

Ourense, Galiza, Spain
@miguelauria – instagram

THE COMEL AWARD FINALISTS

Miguel Auria

Ourense, Galiza, Spain
@miguelauria - instagram
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Miguel Auria (Ourense, 1985) is a photographer, musician and educator. He graduated in Artistic photography at EASD Antonio Faílde and in Violin at the Conservatory of Vigo, furthering his studies in Berlin and with masters such as Fontcuberta. He has exhibited internationally, receiving awards including VEGAP Propuestas24, the Enate Art Grant and “Lírica al Margen.” His project Poéticas para la Memoria de una Guerra Ajena was shown in Paris and Madrid (2024) and will be published as a photobook. He is editor of Caleidoscópica, sings with the OSG Choir, performs with European orchestras, and since 2024 teaches and serves as vice-director at EASD Antonio Faílde.

ARTWORK IN CONTEST

POLYHEDRAL APHRODITE, 2023

PHOTOGRAPHY - Positive-negative diptych
75 x 75 cm (x2)

There is a strong intellectual tension in this work by the Spanish artist Miguel Auria, which plays on the emphasis of a double negative, understood as reflected mirrors and, in some sense, opposites of a realistic image, as well as possible multiples of a single original, whose reversed imprint remains in sensitivity and light. In the proposed work, aluminium is intimately involved in this process. The flashes of light emerging from the darkness indeed give a nearly mythical effect to the sensitive photographic process.

AWARDS

COMEL AWARD 2025 FINALIST

Interview by Ilaria Ferri

Printing on aluminum was, from the outset, both a challenge and a risk, but also a choice that aligns closely with the conceptual framework of the work. In contrast to the fragility of paper, aluminum introduces a resistant materiality that dialogues with the sculptural dimension of the images.

Polyhedral Aphrodite, a finalist work of the 12th edition of the COMEL Award, presents itself as a true treatise on art and contemporary technologies. The work originates from a subversion of Walter Benjamin’s theory on the technical reproducibility of the artwork: in this case, the perpetual reproduction of the Aphrodite of Knidos is disrupted by the superimposition of negatives, which destabilizes the viewer’s gaze. A technique capable of endlessly replicating the artwork instead renders it almost inaccessible. Could you tell us how this idea came about?

One of the great paradoxes of the Aphrodite of Knidos is that the original has not survived to the present. What we preserve are later copies that allow us to intuit what the original might have been like. This condition connects directly with Walter Benjamin’s theory and his reflections on the relationship between aura and technical reproducibility.
It could be argued that, from the very origins of Western culture—if we locate them in ancient Greece—images were already being reproduced in unlimited ways, across different scales and formats. From this perspective, the copy does not appear as a degradation of the original, but rather as its natural mode of existence. For this reason, I am interested in dismantling the auratic discourse and reclaiming the possibility of unlimited reproduction as a legitimate way of experiencing something beautiful, without any further pretension or fetishization.

You have stated that “the diptych explores the plasticity of an obsolete element in contemporary photography: the negative”, while at the same time enhancing its function as an inverted mirror capable of bringing the subject’s shadows to the surface, especially those not immediately visible at a superficial glance. Could you elaborate on this aspect of your work?

I have always found it almost magical to open an old box of photographs and come across those small plastic strips that held an image in a latent state. With the arrival of digital photography, the negative has lost its technical function: the camera now performs the positive conversion, and the image appears directly in the colors and forms we immediately recognize.
However, this functional loss does not imply a loss of plastic value. The negative continues to operate as an autonomous visual space, close to abstraction, that requires us to complete the missing information. In this process, the image ceases to be a simple representation and becomes a perceptual experience. I am interested in this condition of the negative as an inverted mirror, capable of revealing shadows and nuances that escape a superficial glance and that possess a beauty of their own, independent of their reproductive function.

Polyhedral Aphrodite. 2023 (detail)

For this work you chose aluminium as the support, enhancing the three-dimensionality of the image, creating a sense of “simulated” movement and restoring a luminosity that would otherwise be lost on other materials. Do you regularly use aluminium for printing your photographs? What other materials are part of your practice?

Printing on aluminum was, from the outset, both a challenge and a risk, but also a choice that aligns closely with the conceptual framework of the work. In contrast to the fragility of paper, aluminum introduces a resistant materiality that dialogues with the sculptural dimension of the images. Its surface produces an irregular reflective effect that reinforces a sense of instability and movement, allowing the image to change according to light conditions.

In my practice, I usually work with paper precisely because it is an organic material that deteriorates over time. I conceptually relate this degradation to impermanence and to our relationship with death. Working with aluminum, by contrast, introduces a radically different temporal condition: durability, resistance, and permanence. This tension between materials mirrors the conceptual friction present in the work itself, between fragility and endurance, image and matter.

You are also a musician, and references to musical structure are present in your work. How interconnected are these two dimensions—photography and music—and in what ways do they influence each other within your creative process?

Photography and music are, by definition, two antagonistic universes. Music dissolves in time, while the camera attempts precisely the opposite: to seize and fix it. Working within this paradox is both a challenge and a stimulus.

I am interested in approaching my practice through a synaesthetic logic, allowing images to emerge from sound and imagining visual structures suggested by musical rhythm, repetition, duration, and variation. Musical thinking—especially in terms of temporal construction—inevitably permeates my photographic work, shaping how time is compressed, expanded, or fractured within the image.

In your work, time is not merely a theme but a structural element: from classical sculpture to contemporary photography, from myth to technology. What is your relationship with art history, and how important is it for you to engage with the “classical” in order to speak about the present?

I like to think that, in part, I take on the weight of history and the responsibility of transmitting it. As in the quote attributed to Gustav Mahler, tradition is the transmission of fire, not the worship of ashes—and that is precisely the position from which I work. Engaging with the classical does not mean reproducing it, but assuming it as a living structure that can be reinterpreted and transformed.
Time plays a fundamental role in photography, which is, after all, a cut within the continuous flow of space and time. Pushing this idea to its limits is one of the aspects that interests me most. Across my body of work—projects such as Nihil or Poetics for the Memory of Another’s War—I work from a moving train, registering the flow of the landscape itself. In Polyhedral Aphrodite, this concern takes the form of long exposures and the accumulation of temporal layers.
In all these projects, camera shake and technical error are not accidents but conscious decisions. Embracing error is an ethical stance against the illusion of control and perfection promoted by contemporary technology. As Susan Sontag noted, every photograph is a memento mori: a reminder that time is inexorable, that decay is unavoidable, and that fragility is an intrinsic condition of both images and life itself.

Your research suggests a vision of art as a field of stratification and dialogue between different languages. What does it mean for you to make art today, and what role do you believe a work of art can still play in contemporary society?

I believe that art, when it is genuine and distances itself from imposture, remains an extraordinarily powerful means of communication. It connects us with what is most essential within ourselves, encourages reflection, and creates a space of shared meaning that transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Through this collective dimension, art retains the capacity to transform our way of understanding the world. If a work manages to convey—even partially—the questions or tensions that gave rise to it, then it has already fulfilled its purpose.

Looking ahead, in which direction do you feel your research is moving? Will you continue to explore the dialogue between photography, music, and time, or do you envision new trajectories to pursue?

The evolution of my work continues to move toward a deeper exploration of the same core ideas. It is precisely through this process of deepening that new lines of work emerge, as has happened with this series. These are not departures, but renewed perspectives on themes that have preoccupied me—and humanity itself—for millennia: the passage of time, the fragility of life, beauty, and decay.

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