The exhibition, with the title Ctonia, is the second of the MIRADES Cycle in Tarragona, dedicated this year to the sand, it integrates fourteen images by the photographer Lluc Queralt, and offers a new look at this natural element.

The title of the project refers to how they called ancient Greece in the Hellenic era on earth, Demeter, the Greek goddess was called "the one of the underground". The exhibition presented has a direct relationship with Demeter and the artia, a piece of land, previously covered with forest, which is prepared for cultivation, removing the trees and burning the brush which is then spread so that the ashes serve as fertilizer. The burnt garrigue, then, creates a mosaic of black tones that travels parallel to the trencadís that has been made up of fourteen images revealed in glass and with natural pigment showing a set of textures where this nature works as encrypted scores.
The elements of glass, silica sand, sodium carbonate, limestone dolomite and flourite melted at 1400 degrees and the inks used are 98% natural coal and originate the images I present nurtured and "painted" by a heterogeneous subsoil and degraded.

Lluc Queralt
Photographer and visual artist who started in photography in the mid-nineties. He is a senior technician in artistic photography from the School of Art and Design of Tarragona. A tireless traveler, he has made reports in numerous countries: Palestine, Syria, Bosnia, Greece or the United States... but also in Nordic lands such as Iceland, a country where he keeps returning, painting and exhibiting. He has also maintained a remarkable career as a visual artist producing collages that combine references from academia and scientific or technical drawing with inventions and war machines.
In 2017, he won the second edition of the Painting Competition organized by the Catalan Mutual Private Foundation. Prize-winning work in the Absolut Portfolios photo contest.

Mirades
The MIRADES series of exhibitions is a cultural initiative that weaves together the entire territory in a collaborative way, highlighting local heritage through the observation of the four elements of nature: water, sand, fire and air. Each of the elements will be the reason for an annual exhibition, completing the series in four years and increasing the legacy of the historical archive of the College of Architects with the donation of the photographic records that will build the exhibitions. In this way, from a local point of view, we will share and debate global commitments.