Rafa Castells

AVUI SÓC RIC is a solo exhibition by the artist and photographer Rafa Castells (Barcelona, ​​1989) in collaboration with the collective Gracias por su visita at Nogueras Blanchard gallery (Isaac Peral 7, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat), within the framework of Art Nou 2020.

L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and especially the square of Isaac Peral as Rafa Castells home and playground has been the base for his production and work. He observes and documents this environment daily, only equipped with his camera he interacts with everything that crosses his path and that catches his attention. This path and context is of an industrial landscape, of a working class city with its urban neighborhoods. It is in this field, where Rafa Castells looks for a beauty, a poetry. Like a wanderer who inhabits an attitude that can be understood as a slogan, a punchline, he chants a “mantra”: “AVUI SÓC RIC” (“Today I am rich”).

A series of analog photographs captured within this environment, exploited to the limits of its image capacity and printed on industrial canvas, the ones that dominantly contribute to the aesthetics of this area. In a poetic dialogue, with texts, slogans and criticism; references to songs, messages taken from the neighborhood streets and walls, and from his own imaginary… he plays and tackles the heartfelt politics that surround him.

With these photographs, Rafa Castells captures a moment of change and transition in the neighborhood. Castells does not approach exclusively from an anthropological point of view, but as a first-person spectator and actor of the implementation of the cultural district project and its impact on the transformation of a city traditionally linked to industry and the working class.