Le Havre Biennale

4th Biennale d’Art Contemporain
Le Havre, France
September 28th 2012 – May 15th 2013
Directed by Linda Morren and curated by Kevin Grottaglia

Signalétique Libre

I built the Signalétique Libre (free signage) installation exclusively for the Le Havre Contemporary Art Biennial. It will be exhibited on the Jules Ferry square until May 15th 2013.

My idea was to take advantage of the location, a wide open space and very transited – which means a significant pedestrian flow and enough wind – to do a mobile installation. The work was conceived around an idea I have already worked with several times: give the spectator, each time they see the artwork, the possibility to see new compositions. Signalétique Libre questions urban visual communication – very direct, concise and at times even alienating – concentrating in the same reduced space 20 signs with abstract designs, without any intelligible message, that remained in constant motion. The pedestrian is free to interpret what the signs want to communicate or indicate, an open space for the viewer to stop receiving messages and perhaps start to emit them.

Exterior pictures by Mikaël Lesueur

Thanks to Linda Morren, Kevin Grottaglia, Mikaël, Paul and all the crew at the Musée Maritime et Portuaire du Havre.

Bien Urbain

Parcours artistiques dans (et avec) l’espace public
Besançon, France
September 6th – October 6th 2012

Project in collaboration with MOMO

This summer MOMO and I were invited to do our fourth collaboration together for the Bien Urbain festival in Besançon, North-East of France. We worked on two exercises: the first one, called Improbables, was an exercise about doing compositions with pieces of wood in unused gaps in the city. The second one is called Peinture au Cordeau Traceur (Paint Snap-Line) and is an adaptation of the traditional chalk line tool. The technique we developed allowed us to trace long lines on a building of almost any height using paint instead of chalk.

www.bien-urbain.fr

Together with Bien Urbain, we edited a zine about these two projects:
www.justeici.bigcartel.com/product/momo-eltono-zine-poster.

Improbables

We came up with this idea after noticing a lot of small, unused spaces on walls all around the city. After collecting scrap wood, we loaded up our cart with the wood and our tools. Then, as we walked around the city, we installed simple wooden compositions in every gap we found interesting. All the pieces were put into place using only tension – no nails nor glue were used. The end result were 52 installations found all around the “Battant” quarter in Besançon. On an individual level, the pieces were quite discreet and often looked like some cheap repair work; but when people started noticing the series, they immediately realized that something was happening… We were amazed by how intact the pieces remained and how slowly they disappeared. The hardest part of this project was to try to make the installations NOT look like pieces of art.

Peinture au Cordeau Traceur

(Paint Snap-Line)

For this project, we used the traditional chalk line tracer tool as our inspiration and conducted experiments eventually developing a similar tool that enabled us to mark long straight lines on buildings with paint. After a few drawings, we came out with a design and using the material available to us in Bien Urbain’s basement, we built the artifact. We did three tests, threw paint everywhere and finally came up with a satisfactory result.

Pictures by Sierra, MOMO and Eltono.
Thanks to David, Lucile and to the whole Bien Urbain crew.

Deambular

Deambular (Wandering)
Artium, Basque Museum of Contemporary Art
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
July 6th – September 2nd 2012

Praxis Project: Curated by Blanca de la Torre – Production coordination by Yolanda de Egoscozabal

Deambular – Actions in the public space of Vitoria-Gasteiz and in the exhibition space
Control center and exhibition space: Praxis, North Gallery, ARTIUM
Curators: Sergio García and Javier Abarca

eltono-deambular-artium

For Deambular (Wandering), Eltono has devised a series of formulas to produce work based on the everyday action of walking through the city, the ebbs and flows of the street and pedestrian interaction, formulas that will run for seven days prior to the exhibition’s inauguration and for seven days after. The artist uses these games to outline direct connections between the exhibition space and the public space, links that invite the viewer to stroll through the city and thus form part of the creative process. The Praxis exhibition hall will serve as a workshop and control centre, and at the same time as a space to display the documentation arising from the various experiments. (Abstract taken from the Museum website)

Deambular was my first solo show in a museum. As usual now when I have to show public space art in a private space, I created artworks in the street that were related with other pieces presented in the museum. Over the years, I have realized that in every project I do, I end-up walking a lot throughout the city; consequently, for the Artium project I decided to use this action of walking to generate my artworks. To do this, I developed two types of actions outside the museum:

1 – The Thumbtacks installation (Chinchetas): I installed compositions made with colored paper strips held together with thumbtacks on wooden surfaces. As the day passed, the pedestrians started tearing the papers and removing the thumbtacks. I registered every change until the pieces completely disappeared.
2 – Illegal street paintings: during five nights, I went out to paint in the street of Victoria.

These night actions generated a lot of movements: from observation, localization and exploration to action and documentation; including all the movements of everyday life such as going from the museum to the hotel, eating, buying material, doing an interview, having a drink… At the beginning of the project, I chose a color code (red: Monday; blue: Tuesday; yellow: Wednesday; green: Thursday; orange: Friday; violet: Saturday and white: Sunday) and I started to register all of my movements on a map; at the same time, while I was walking in the city, I stuck small round stickers in each corner I passed using this color code. This way, I recorded my paths on a paper and also marked them in the city so people could transit through or follow them.


Between the street and the museum, I produced 6 types of works:

1 – Thumbtacks, installations with paper strips and thumbstacks – in the street (10)
2 – Paintings in the street (6)
3 – Colored circular stickers marking the daily path – in the street (approx. 150 per day, total approx.: 1650)
4 – Paths Mural Painting (in the museum)
5 – Drawing generated by the Thumbtacks installations (in the museum) (25; 5 sets of 4 and 1 set of 5)
6 – Photographic enlargements of the street paintings (in the museum) (2)

Finally, as a testimony of the 12 days of work I spent in the museum room, we decided to leave my workspace in the same state as it was the last day.

Pictures below…

Two fanzines were edited by the museum: 1st Fanzine (English) and Final Fanzine (Euskadi, English, Castellano)
(Text and design by Javier Abarca, photos by Irene Moratinos)

An extended version of the final fanzine has been edited by Javier Abarca for Urbanario: Urbanario Fanzine (English)
(Text and design by Javier Abarca, photos by Irene Moratinos)

Links:
Artium Museum press release: np120706-exhib-praxis-eltono
ARTIUM presents Strolling, an urban art project by Eltono for the Praxis programme
www.artium.org/English/Exhibitions/Exhibition/tabid/336

The artworks generated by the Chinchetas installation are available for purchase through SC Gallery.

Chinchetas (Thumbtacks) Installation:

I installed simple compositions made of colored paper held by thumbtacks on wood surface around the city. The installations were slowly altered by the pedestrians. After observing their evolution, I generated 1/1 scale drawings that documented the different steps that we were able to register. It resulted in a series of six each containing four or five drawings depending on how many changes were recorded. The first drawing of each series is showing the composition in its first step, just like I installed it in the street. The last drawing shows the last step, an empty paper, symbolizing the total disappearance of the piece. On each drawing is written the place, date and hour of the registered changes.

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Illegal Paintings in the City:

For several nights, after working all day in the museum, I went out to paint in the street of Victoria. Out of the six paintings I did, we selected two and printed life-size photographs to fill two walls from top to bottom in the exhibition space. After that, we gave to the visitors the freedom to discover the other four paintings in the city by themselves.

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Paths Mural Painting:

Every morning on the museum’s wall, using the correspondent color, I painted the path I have been walking the day before. Using masking tape, the drawing was stylized and simplified. I added a rule: the more I transited a street during that day, the thicker I had to paint the line. This uncontrolled mural evolved everyday during the 12 days of the residency. The idea was to generate a wall painting in which the final appearance was out of my control and to appreciate the result as a whole abstract painting and not like individual maps.

I used a large paper map to transfer the daily paths from my notebook to the museum wall. This graphic transfer process generated a huge quantity of colored dots (the ones I was marking and following as guides to paint the lines on the wall). The large map proved to be a faithful replica of the map I was creating while sticking the colored dots everyday in the city. This large piece, called Matrix Map, was left on the floor of the museum in the middle of the room – the same place it could be found during the time I was working in the museum.

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Round Stickers:

The round stickers experiment was the most intense part of the project. I had to mark my path through the city at every moment, sticking round stickers in every street-corner I was transiting. On average, I stuck one sticker every 30 seconds while I was walking in the city. The idea was to observe how the colorful points were accumulating on the spots I transited the most; and at the same time, to mark my path so people could follow it. A different color was used for each day, using the same color code as for the mural painting.

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Exhibition Pictures:

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Somewhere inside the museum…

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Photographs: Irene Moratinos and Eltono
Many thanks to Sergio and Javier, Blanca de la Torre, Daniel Castillejo and Irene.

Path Mural

Deambular (Wandering)
Artium, Basque Museum of Contemporary Art
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
July 6th – September 2nd 2012

Praxis Project: Curated by Blanca de la Torre – Production coordination by Yolanda de Egoscozabal

Deambular – Actions in the public space of Vitoria-Gasteiz and in the exhibition space
Control center and exhibition space: Praxis, North Gallery, ARTIUM
Curators: Sergio García and Javier Abarca

See the whole project here: www.eltono.com/en/exhibitions/deambular

Paths Mural Painting:

Every morning on the museum’s wall, using the correspondent color, I painted the path I have been walking the day before. Using masking tape, the drawing was stylized and simplified. I added a rule: the more I transited a street during that day, the thicker I had to paint the line. This uncontrolled mural evolved everyday during the 12 days of the residency. The idea was to generate a wall painting in which the final appearance was out of my control and to appreciate the result as a whole abstract painting and not like individual maps.

I used a large paper map to transfer the daily paths from my notebook to the museum wall. This graphic transfer process generated a huge quantity of colored dots (the ones I was marking and following as guides to paint the lines on the wall). The large map proved to be a faithful replica of the map I was creating while sticking the colored dots everyday in the city. This large piece, called Matrix Map, was left on the floor of the museum in the middle of the room – the same place it could be found during the time I was working in the museum.

1/1 – Caochangdi

C-Space
Red No.1 – C1 & C2, Caochangdi, Beijing, China
June 30th – August 26th 2012

Curated by Nora Jaccaud – Directed by Melle Hendrikse

The 1/1 project aims to bring contemporary art to the street and the street into the gallery. Bringing art to unexpected places has been the goal of this French artist since he started painting abstract geometric figures in the street back in 1999. At the entrance of Caochangdi there is a sign that reads “Caochangdi Art Village”. However, when Eltono came for the first time, he was surprised to find an almost tangible frontier dividing the village and the galleries. After spending a few days in Caochangdi it became clear to him that the people who come to visit the galleries often miss the village, and very few villagers go and visit the art galleries. During his one month residency in Caochangdi, Eltono decided to use his paintings to create a link between these two worlds. To begin, he mapped out the village including all of the tiny streets and alleyways, noting down all the doors he found interesting or inspiring. Entering into conversation with the villagers he explained the goal of his project and asked permission to paint their doors – this served as the first link between the artist and the village. Over the next several weeks, he spent time connecting with residents and painting, creating a path throughout the neighborhood filled with mysterious abstract images.

A selection of life size photographs, the result of Eltono’s residency, were on exhibit in C-space gallery until the end of August, 2012. The rest of the doors can still be viewed by wandering the streets of Caochangdi and following the map produced by the artist (downloadable here).

The aim of this project is to create an exchange between two groups: the art community and the local residents. Those who regularly visit art galleries are invited to have a walk in the village and enjoy the paintings in their original locations, while the residents are invited to enter the art gallery and see photographs of their doors in a new and unfamiliar context. The “1/1” title refers to the life size printed photographs of the doors as well as the one to one relationship that exists between the exhibition space and the street – for Eltono these two spaces are equally valid when it comes to displaying art. The life size photographs create the illusion of real doors and build a virtual passageway connecting the street and the gallery. Using street art as his medium, the 1/1 project by Eltono hopes to provide a platform where art is accessible to everyone.

The life-size door photographs are available for purchase through the gallery. Each photo is unique and numbered 1/1. The pictures were taken with a 6×7 medium format argentic camera and printed with giclée technique on high quality photographic paper.

埃尔多诺-1/1计划-草场地
2012年6月30日至8月26日
艺术家将出席开幕式
开幕时间:2012年6月30日星期六下午4时至6时

埃尔多诺的1/1计划,旨在将当代艺术带上街头,而将街道带入画廊。自这位法国艺术家1999年开始在街头绘制抽象几何图案以来,他的目标始终是将艺术带到出人意料的现场。
草场地村的入口,有一块写着“草场地艺术村”的招牌。埃尔多诺第一次来这里的时候,他非常吃惊地发现了一个几乎看得见摸得着的界限,将村子与画廊分割开 来。在草场地度过几天之后,对他来说非常明显,来参观画廊的人往往忽略了村子,而且很少有村民来参观艺术画廊。在草场地居住的第一个月,埃尔多诺便决定用 自己的画来营造这两个世界之间的某种联系。
一开始,他在地图上标出了整个村子,包括小街道和胡同,记下了他觉得有趣或者有灵感的所有门洞。他开始与村民交谈,解释了自己这个计划的目的,请求得到准 许,在他们的门上画画——这成为艺术家与村民之间的首次联系。接下来的几个星期,他花时间建立居民与绘画之间的联系,在整个村落里营造了一条路径,充满了 神秘的抽象图案。
作为埃尔多诺居住项目的成果,精选出的与实物等大的照片将在C空间画廊展出,展至2012年8月底。在草场地村的街道上漫步时,按照艺术家制作的地图,可以看到其余的大门。
该计划的目的,是要营造出两个群体之间的交流:艺术群体与当地居民。定期参观画廊的人,应邀在村中漫步,在原来的地点欣赏画作,而居民则应邀进入画廊,在一个新的、不熟悉的语境之下观看他们的大门的照片。
“1/1”这个标题,指的是按照实物大小制作的大门照片,以及在展览空间和街道之间存在的一对一的关系——对于埃尔多诺而言,在展示艺术的时候,这两个空 间同样是有效的。实物大小的照片营造了真实的大门的幻象,构建起连接街道与画廊的虚拟通道。埃尔多诺利用街头艺术作为自己的媒介,1/1计划旨在提供任何 人都能接触艺术的平台。

www.c-spacebeijing.com

Video:

Process Pictures:

Photographs printing and installation:

Opening pictures:

Photos by Sierra and Eltono.
Thanks Melle, Nora, Wangfan, Lina, Cindy, Liugang, Angela & Aitor, Sierra, Alonso, Jacob, Elisa and of course: Xinkai, Haizi, Maomao, Caochandi Number 1 and all the residents of Caochangdi.

The Barrios Project

I have always been fascinated by auto-construction. From the gate at the end of a garden to a brick house found on the slope of a hill in Brazil. This type of architecture is immediate, organic, it expands in an almost natural way. This urban fabric’s apparent chaos is often more human than one found in a city where the construction follows standard urban planning. Aesthetically speaking, worn out textures and the discovery of a variety of materials (bricks, cement blocks, metal panels, wooden slabs…) have always attracted me as an artistic surface.

eltono-barrios-mexico05

The Barrios project began in April of 2006 when, invited by some friends, Nuria Mora and I painted in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. After exchanging ideas with the residents, I was very pleased to see that they were so receptive to what I was painting. They really appreciated the colors and the composition. This positive reaction led me to reflect on Contemporary Art and specifically its access to the public. It was obvious that, unfortunetly, the residents of the favela didn’t often visit museums or art galleries. Even though the appreciation of a work of art is universal, access to art itself is not. Since then, it has become a special mission for me to bring contemporary art to places where there is none. When discussing this with my friend Nazza, a fellow artist, he said, “what is the point of painting in the street in the center of Buenos Aires where people have money and can buy art and pay to enter museums, I only paint on the outskirts of the city.” He is completely right… Why give art for free to the people who need it the least? Where people really need art is in the Barrios!

This is not about outside eyes prying, or looking into a foreign world. My idea is to create a dialogue with the residents and enrich their daily lives by providing them with a humble gift. Sharing with them what I know and receiving what they can teach me. With Barrios, the human experience is always more rewarding for me than the artistic experience.

Barrios is an open project in constant development, more interventions and publications will come in the future. Of course, any idea or proposal is welcome as I am always looking to find new opportunities to make art more democratic.

Below you will find photographic galleries of six projects that I have developed within the framework of Barrios up until now. The photos were taken by project organizers, friends, neighbors and a few are my own.

Gardiena Azul

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 04/2006
In collaboration with Nuria Mora
More details: www.eltono.com/projects/gardenia-azul

Puerto Lumbreras

Murcia, Spain, 08/2006
Two week artistic residence within the neighborhood
In collaboration with Emece and Puerto Lumbreras City Council
A book about the project has been edited by the city council:
www.eltono.com/boutique/puerta-lumbreras-book
More details: www.eltono.com/projects/puerta-lumbreras

Huasteca, Santa Catarina and Espinazo

Nuevo León, Mexico, 11/2007
Paintings made with the help of Nrmal, Maf and Screw

Puerto Vallarta

Jalisco, Mexico, 10/2008
Ten day artistic residence
In collaboration with Paco Rosas and Libelulart
More details: www.eltono.com/projects/puerto-vallarta

Tampiquito

Monterrey, Mexico, 04/2009
Two-month artistic residence within the neighborhood
In collaboration with Nrmal and El Narval
More details: www.eltono.com/projects/residencia-tampiquito

Villa Urquiza and La Matanza

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 12/2007 and 04/2010
Paintings made with the help of Nazza Stencil

We were returning to my friend Nazza’s home after painting, when we ran into the neighbor´s children playing football against a wall in front of the house. I paint lines, we had white paint and we were walking through a neighborhood in Argentina… It was pretty obvious that I would end up painting a goal on the wall! This is probably the most interactive piece I have ever painted.

Caochangdi – 草场地

Caochangdi, Beijing, China, 06/2012
1/1 Project with C-Space gallery
More details here: www.eltono.com/en/projects/1-1-caochangdi

Esto no es Graffiti

Cicus
Seville, Spain
May 8th – May 31st 2012

Project curated by Delimbo

What is graffiti? What is this thing called Urban art? Is this graffiti? Art? Where are the limits? Who sets them? Esto No Es Graffiti (This is not graffiti) is an exhibition about something called and labeled in many different ways; but in essence, is vivid and spontaneous creation, with disparate methodologies, millions of points of views, and no written rules. The only thing that remains clear is that this is not Graffiti. Graffiti is in the street and it’s free, enjoy it while it still exists – Esto No Es Graffiti, text by Seleka, curator of the show for Delimbo.

www.estonoesgraffiti.com

For the Esto no es Graffiti show, I presented three artworks, two of them in collaboration with Seleka.

Absence

360 x 330 cm, cut off drywall

The first artwork is called Absence. Based on the name of the show and reflecting on the issue of showing graffiti in private spaces, I drew shapes cutting the drywall that protected the original brick wall. The result exhibited was the absence of the artwork, thus claiming the street as its original base.

Calle Buiza y Mensaque 3

Seleka and Eltono
200 x 150 cm each piece – Spray on 300 gr Fabriano paper – Spray on wall and photographic print

The second artwork I showed, in collaboration with Seleka, was also a reflexion around the act of showing graffiti in an exhibition space. We produced a drawing on paper and an illegal painting in the street. The painting in the street was the negative shape of the one on the paper. Inside the exhibition, we hung the drawing along with a life size picture of the illegal piece in the street.

Rompecabezas (Puzzle)

Seleka and Eltono
400 x 200 cm, wood and spray paint

For the third artwork, we assembled a wooden collage on a wall and worked on top of it; first I started with tape and then Seleka used paint. Once the piece was finished, we asked Marcos, who was in charge of installing and assembling all of the pieces in the show, to disassemble the piece and reassemble it in a different order. We did not interfere in the composition of the piece and let chance and the assembler’s criteria decide the final appearance. The idea of not controlling the final result of the work is inspired by the deterioration that can be observed in the pieces painted in the city: factors out of the artist’s control change a painting gradually until, in most cases, it disappears completely.

Photographs by Delimbo and Eltono
Thanks to Laura and Seleka, Marcos and Domingo

Caballo Caballo Tigre Tigre – 马马虎虎

Sanlitun North Street 81, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
May 2012
Organized by Migas with the support of the Instituto Cervantes de Pekín and Nali Patio

The third Equipo Plastico’s exhibition was held in Beijing. As usual now, we stayed for a month residency, walking, visiting and observing the city. We created artworks inspired in our daily experiences. Unlike the previous two exhibitions, in Peru and Mexico, in China we faced a cultural and linguistic barrier much bigger; but that barrier did nothing but turn the project into a more intense and enriching experience.

The complete documentation about the project is published on the official Equipo Plástico website: www.equipoplastico.com/projects/caballo-caballo-tigre-tigre/caballo-caballo-tigre-tigre-en

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