Josep Lluís Mateo designs the Toni Catany International Photography Centre
Work in progress

The house where photographer Toni Catany was born in Llucmajor (Majorca) is one of the spaces that will be home to the Toni Catany International Photography Centre, with the aim of creating a centre for the interpretation of the photographer’s work and dissemination of this artistic discipline, as well as conserving the archive and collection of his work.

Josep Lluís Mateo, winner of the ideas competition organised by the Toni Catany Foundation and the Government of the Balearic Islands, faces the challenge of establishing a link between the houses of photographers Tomàs Montserrat and Toni Catany, where the centre is to be housed, and converting the two spaces into one.

His proposal presents a spacious courtyard leading into the installation which, in the middle of the symbolic arm that joins and unifies the two houses, converts the former private domesticity represented by the livestock pen located here into an entrance to the public space that is to be the centre housing the photographer’s artistic legacy.

The Toni Catany Foundation, created in 2014 to further the photographer’s desire to set up an International Photography Centre, currently houses the exhibition Cossiols (Flowerpots). Time Portrayed, bringing together the photographs taken by Toni Catany in the summer of 1985 in the house where he spent his early years, many of them using as their setting the pen that Mateo will transform into the main artery through the centre devised by the artist.

Cossiols (Flowerpots). Time Portrayed

This exhibition sets out to explore the relationship between the house where the photographer was born and the austerity of a series of objects (some handmade by his mother) that bring together mineral silence and organic expression to generate the slow but firm trace of time, a singular beauty.

004 corral 1967 toni catany © FTC copia 1
005 corral 1967 toni catany © FTC copia 1
003 corral 1967 toni catany © FTC copia 1
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Photos of the livestock pen that will house the entrance courtyard to the new Toni Catany International Photography Centre. © Toni Catany, 1967

Exhibition:
On view: 27 September 2019 to 26 January 2020
Venue:
Claustre de Sant Bonaventura
Carrer Fra Joan Garau, 2
07620 Llucmajor, Balearic Islands

Photo of the exhibition Cossiols (Flowerpots). Time Portrayed. This montage shows some of the sketches in which Josep Lluís Mateo developed his idea for the new Toni Catany International Photography Centre, the project model and FACTS, the latest book published about the architect to include his recent work.