Ber Arce

Born in San José (Costa Rica) in 1980, Ber Arce went to the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) then moved to Barcelona in 2008 where he studied photography and art direction. He started very young to be interested in images, which has led him to take courses and read about semiotics, theory and art history, with a self-taught point, capricious and far from academic formality.

Soft Existentialism, presented at Galerie C.O.A in April-May 2019 displays a series of his “Cosmic Landscapes”.

“Use nature not as inspiration but as raw material, as an expressive element. Take advantage of randomness as a criterion for composition and my emotional reactions as glitches.

Cosmic Landscape starts spontaneously in 2016, in the first experiments and pieces I discovered the world of the miniscopic term with which I refer to looking at objects that are visible to the naked eye but magnified. Do not confuse with the microscopic. It was to find a new space of creation and contemplation at the same time. A ritual that leaves a memory. A process that explores imperfection and randomness, which occurs through unexpected encounters such as life itself. Inspired by certain concepts of physics and chemistry such as entropy and relativity, Cosmic Landscapes creates an emotional and allegorical view of the universe. A synecdoche taken to the extreme. The use of the scanner as a capture mode also determines the aesthetics due to the lack of depth of field. 

For the last 3 years I have worked capturing these miniscopic landscapes in different places such as The Pyrenees, The Alps, The Urals, Forests of Quebec and the Mediterranean with the intention of capturing the feeling that each place gave me.” - Ber Arce.