Nocturna (English Edition)

Over the past seven years Fernando Maquieira has conducted an obsessive investigation in museums all around the world to discover what happens to artworks behind closed doors. What mysteries lie in the museums when they are shut to the public. He often wondered what sensations he might experience if he could walk through the galleries at night, if he could fullfill the fantasy of ambling in a shut museum, surrounded by works of art at a time when no one else is looking at them.

In a museum, artworks partake of the spectator’s mood, and thanks to the aesthetic joy, the emotions they prompt and the knowledge they contribute, they reach the full potential of their meaning and their significance. Only in a museum and within the individual experience of the spectator do the works gain reality and relevance, do they become fundamental life experiences.

Fernando Maquieira begins his career as an assistant in the studio of spanish photographer Fernando Gordillo (Madrid 1933-2015). In parallel, he was formed as a graphic designer while developing a music career. From 1998 he began to work in the graphic arts company Cromotex. At that time, he was also working as a photographer documenting the activity of museums and reproducing art collections.