Alba cinema, particularly the posters advertising the films of this remarkable X cinema, are part of the urban, cultural and emotional landscape of central Madrid. Rafael Sánchez, projectionist and owner of the cinema, is the author of these posters, performed on white card with colored markers. During the last two decades, Sanchez has challenged legislation to ban the display of promotional material porn movies with its colorful naif style. These posters originally born as a response to the need to advertise porn movies without using explicit images. Executed in a small room with chipped gray walls upstairs at the cinema, next to ambigú, the author stores thousands of these posters, many of them saved from burning coal in the boiler that heated the film until its recent closure . Now, for the first time, set out a selection outside the entrance hall of cinema Alba, granting letter art to a hauntingly singular, horny and extravagant collection, and serving as a document of a space that has written the word "End" a few weeks ago.
The exhibition will take place at La Factoría de Papel, in the neighborhood of Lavapies, as well as online art gallery Gunter Gallery. It will take place at the same time as Easter, to contribute in a spicy way with the 'Passion Week'.
Rafael Sanchez and Alba cinema starring 'Paradiso' (2013), a documentary, awarded the prize Rhizome and exhibited at festivals such as Malaga, and just being the subject of the third edition of the monograph Duo, published by the Nophoto collective and signed by the photographer Laura Martínez Lombardy and the journalist Sara Brito Garcia.
Why this exhibition?
The disappearance of traditional shops in the center of Madrid as cafes cinemas, small shops trades (Fajas Ruiz, Candy Paco) or as the of Alba Cinema, recently closed last March 8, causes a gentrification or denaturation of our cultural heritage and historic urban landscape. Rafael Sánchez’s posters operate, now more than ever, as witnesses of a missing space, traces of the last X Cinema of the city and the last film of continuous session.
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