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.
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_ARQdrawings 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/.
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.
“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.
Big thanks to everyone who made this project possible: Pigment Workroom, Zic Zic, Museco, my fantastic assistant David and tutti gli studenti del Classico!
Archival ink on 300 g. Gvarro paper.
3 colors, 20 x 18 cm. (7,8 x 7 inches).
The 9x(3C8F4R)compositions are composed of three layers stamped one on top of the other, each one of a different color. First layer is yellow, second one is red and third one is blue. For each layer, the shapes and their rotation are randomly generated. The 9x(3C8F4R)protocol works on a 3 x 3 grid with 8 shapes (including an empty one) and 4 rotations. The protocol is rigorously followed and the final result is never known before the end. Each composition is unique.
SET Espai d’Art (at Galería Nueva) Madrid, Spain
October 2021
For the solo show Desperfectos, I presented three projects: Plotter de paseo (walking plotter), Transportistas (shippers) y Chaparrones(rain showers).
Plotter de Paseo (Walking plotter)
Following my research around the idea of making art while walking, I made a walking plotter that uses gravity and my body’s movements to activate some mechanisms and create drawings from my paths.
Transportistas (shippers)
I built five boxes to ship five artworks from my studio in France to the gallery in Madrid. A box is meant to protect the art, but I painted the art on the outside of it. Instead of protecting, the box helps the deterioration of the art. I imagined this project as a collaboration between the shipping companies and me. I built, painted and handled the boxes with maximum care until the very moment I handed them over to the shipper. At that point I lost control of their condition. I was only able to discover the result when I arrived at the gallery in Madrid.
– T1 and T2 were sent with La Poste (Colissimo),
– T3 was sent with TNT,
– T4 was sent with UPS,
– T5 was sent with DHL.
Chaparrones (Rain showers)
Artworks created for the solo show Sérendipité at the Hangar 107 Art Center in Rouen in July 2021.
Following my researches around the idea of artwork alteration with uncontrolled external factors, I decided to take advantage of the Normandy weather to walk around the art center each time it was raining, protecting myself under an artwork. The colored parallel lines sequence traced with felt pens are defaced by the water drips which make the ink bleed. because the exposition time is the same for each outing, the characteristics of each rain shower can be clearly seen in the result. Big spaced drops, light rain or strong rain shower all leave a different imprint on the ink.
![DMA_ARQ[cmy]](https://www.eltono.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Eltono-DMA_ARQ_feat.jpg)
