2022 – Eltono

Oriflammes

Bourdeilles, France
June 2022

Project realized in collaboration with the town of Bourdeilles and the Dordogne-Périgord Departmental Cultural Agency.

Upon the invitation of the Departmental Cultural Agency and the town of Bourdeilles, I have conceived a series of graphic compositions for the Grand Rue, the main street in the village. This work involved participatory workshops with over seventy residents. This installation marks the official launch of a collective consultation initiated by the municipality regarding the future urban and landscape redevelopment of the town.

I collaborated with primary school students, volunteers, as well as residents from the La Prada medical center and the Les Deux Séquoias nursing home. Using architectural elements, I created twenty-four shapes and defined a color palette. I introduced participants to a graphic and playful protocol where choices were based on the results of dice rolls. Each number corresponded to a shape, an orientation, and a color. The dice throws generated over two hundred motifs, allowing me to compose the banners.

Participants, from 6 to 101 years old:
Erinne, Emma, Lisa, Elvin, Antoine, Loup, Luther, Arthur, Joseph, Alice, Margot, Abel, Céline, Guy, Patrick, Elie, Nolan, Solange, Chantal, Alexis, Killyan, John, Jessica, Clara, Nathalie, Pierre, Paulette, Simone, Hameury, Jean-Claude, Marie, Alain, Christine, Nicolas, Maria, Marie-Colette, Joan, Lorenzo, Thomas, Camille, Soyann, Flore, Sasha, Maëlys, Ethan, Adèle, Yoann, Jaja, Hugo, Jules V, Léo, Lulu, Océane, Elisa, Léon, Jules F, Mélissa, Eywa, Ladig, Kyllian, along with their teachers and activity leaders.

Production:
Bourdeilles Town Hall & Dordogne-Périgord Departmental Cultural Agency – 2022

Photos: Eltono

Out of Disorder

Antonio Colombo Gallery
Via Solferino, 44, Milan, Italy
December 2022

Out of Disorder is a show about abstraction and how we create our own world around it. Alongside Guido Bisagni (108) and Jeroen Erosie.

Text by Vittorio Parisi:

“To get out of chaos without erasing chaos”: with this phrase, Gilles Deleuze tackled the question of abstract painting, underlining its ability to transform chaos into cosmos, without however allowing the latter to disavow the former. Great abstract painting is, to all effects, a way for force disorder into a form, producing images that do not resemble anything, but precisely for this reason have a universal function. To take this path, the painter has to paradoxically yield part of the control he exerts on material, in order to usher it out from the disorder of the world. This momentary loss of control is the basis for the work of three great exponents of abstract muralism: 108, Eltono and Erosie.

Starting from a shared background – that of graffiti writing – although with three very different approaches to painting, these artists produce forms with the goal of putting the chaos of reality back into an unprecedented order: graphic, dense with signs that simulate letters and pictograms, in the case of Erosie; geometric, the result of a creative process to some extent externalized and open to chance, in the case of Eltono; mystical, inhabited by irregular, spectral forms, in the work of 108. Whether this happens within the boundaries of a wall, a canvas or a sheet of paper, the principle that governs the works in this show does not change, which is the principle of all great abstract art: on the very thin borderline between chaos and cosmos, the realm of pure form begins.

Pictures by Pier Maulini.

DMA_ARQ

Aleatory Mechanical Drawings (DMA), 3 colors, 16 x 24 cm (6.3 x 9.4 inches).
Pigmented ink on acid-free Montval Canson 300 g. paper. Series of 99 monotypes, each drawing is unique.

The DMA_ARQ drawings are composed of three layers traced one on top of the other, each one has a different color. For each layer, the protocol builds a 2 x 3 grid. In each cell, it places a shape, randomly selected out of 24 (including an empty one). The generated image is sent to an Axidraw plotter with a marker mounted on it. Each layer uses a different color, so the marker has to be manually changed for each new one.

For DMA_ARQ[cmy], the collector can choose his drawing using the compositions generator.

To generate and order a drawing, please follow the instructions here: www.eltono.com/DMA_ARQ/.

Video of the process:

Pictures:

Drawings :

Modo n.º52

Generative mural painting
Paris La Défense, France
September 2022

Project commissioned by Art Entreprise for Paris La Défense and QPark.

Intervention inside the elevator’s shaft:

Thanks to Arsène, Ulysse, Elie and Mohamed and his crew.

Espaces Manipulables

Mille Formes Art Center
23 Rue Fontgieve, Clermont-Ferrand, France
April 2022

Mille Formes is an art initiation center for very young public (0 to 6 years old). It was conceived by the city of Clermont-Ferrand in partnership with the Centre Pompidou.

“Espaces Manipulables” (manipulable spaces) is a set of three interactive and immersive installations which goal is to invite the visitors to take part in the evolution of the artworks around them. A creative immersion that goes in contradiction to the sacralisation of the artwork and that, on the contrary, invites the public to touch, move and experiment with the objects forming the art. Thus making the visitor being art of the artwork and able to observe the results and discover the existing interactions between shapes, colors and space.

Modo n.º51

Generative and collective painting
Saint-Cyprien Middle School, France
June/July 2022
20 participants

Aleatory sequence of four colors alternated with white. Project commissioned by the College of Saint-Cyprien with the participation of the Departmental Cultural Agency Dordogne-Périgord.

Modo n.º50

Generative and collective mural painting
Nancy, France
June 2022

Project commissioned by the city of Nancy with the fine Art Museum of Nancy and produced by Le Mur Nancy. With participants from Braconnot elementary school, Saint Michel Jericho Social Center, REMM Children’s Home and the neighbors.

Gymnasium Maurice Jacquet :

Wall under the VEBE (East Suburb Express Way) :

VEBE’s pillars :

Process :

Pictures: Pierre, Greg and Eltono.

Modo n.º49

“A talk with the city”
Generative and collective mural painting
Conversano, Bari, Italy
May 2022

“A talk with the city” is a public art project funded by the STHAR LAB of the Puglia Region and entrusted by the Municipality of Conversano to the Pigment Workroom cultural association in collaboration with “Museco” museum complex of Conversano, CIME, ZICZIC and CONTEMPO.

The shapes used for this protocol were inspired by architectural details of the city of Conversano. The old part of the city is full of arches, columns, stone stairs and more arches. Before the painting, a generative silk screen printing street workshop was organized to create the compositions to be painted on the wall. More than 30 participants from the high school in front of the wall joined us in the process. During the next two weeks, David and I painted the top part and the people from Pigment Workroom, with the help of the participants, painted the bottom part. As the wall has always been an important graffiti spot in the city, we decided to leave the bottom part blank and open to spontaneous interventions.

https://talkwiththecity.it

Inspiration and process:

Big thanks to everyone who made this project possible: Pigment Workroom, Zic Zic, Museco, my fantastic assistant David and tutti gli studenti del Classico!