page_expo – 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.

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.

Desperfectos

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.

Set Espai d’Art
Galería Nueva

More information: https://galerianueva.com/galerias/setespaidart/

Sérendipité

Hangar 107 Art Center
Rouen, France
July 2021

For the Sérendipité (serendipity) solo show, I presented eight bodies of work: two generative mural paintings, four street experimentations, one interactive mural installation and a generative sculptures project.

Averses (rain showers)

SM7

The SM7 sculptures are a reiteration of the Modo n.°7 protocol using volume. Eight different shapes are generated and laid out so the sculpture is stable. Once the balance is found, the molded pieces are assembled and the sculpture is fixed.

55 panneaux (55 panels)

Following a generative protocol, 55 abstract compositions were painted on 50 x 50 cm wood panels. The hanging system allows to easily move the pieces around. This way, all along the duration of the show, the public can switch the panel around to make the composition evolves.

Modo n.°46

Puting the technological breakthrough of NFT in generative art to good use, I uploaded a code online so 16 collectors could generate 16 digital abstract compositions. Each one of them was painted in a cell following the generation order. The final result was discovered at the end of the painting because no simulation of the complete composition was made.

https://www.eltono.com/lab/projects/modo46/

RUFO

An abstract composition is painted on a wood board and a rope is attached to it. I walk the board, painted face towards the floor, on a looping route that has been defined beforehand. The result is discovered at the end of the loop. In Rouen, I chose to walk eight boards on paths going through the docks and bridges around the Seine river.

Modo n.°45 (Modo n.°7 reiteration)

After discovering a perfect 7×7 grid on the central freestanding wall, we painted the generative wall painting Modo n.°45 following the Modo n.°7 protocol.

Pierres peintes (painted rocks)

When I arrived at the art center, I went outside to look for rocks. Each rock was painted with three different color coats. The rocks were then brought to the right bank of Rouen and I kicked them to make them roll following predefined paths. Some of them were dropped in the Mont-Saint-Aignan slopes and one, the biggest, rolled on the left bank around the art center.

Détours

Random paths (x5) were executed in Niort in 2017 for the show La Ville et le Mouvement curated by Winterlong Gallery.

For a predefined time, I wander in the city with a dice in my pocket. At each street intersection, I roll the dice to decide where to go next. The GPS data of the path is recorded and a sculpture is made out of the result. The sculptures are shown like abstract artworks resulting of my movement in the city.

Overview of the show:

Thanks to all the Hangar 107 crew, Jean Guillaume, Nicolas, Marc, Kim, Théo, Caro, Marilou and Gabin.

Pictures: Juan Cruz, Jean Guillaume Panis and Eltono.

Fault Lines

Slika Gallery
25 rue Auguste Compte, Lyon, France
June 2019

Duo show with MOMO

www.galerie-slika.com

Corners of(f) Society

Colab Gallery
Weil am Rhein, Germany
November 2018 – April 2019

Project in collaboration with Luce

Curated by Daniel Künzler

www.colab-gallery.com

After our first collaboration in 2015 that focused on the idea of the periscope and the ability to see through a wall, we did it again with more portable devices and new shapes to try and experiment with them in different situations in the city. The objects were shown alongside pictures of the actions we completed with them.

Periscopes

Curator’s text:

On 24th November 2018, the Colab Gallery will openned its doors for the group exhibition “Corners Of(f) Society”, featuring seven international artists that work with, around and in urban areas.

We would like to ask visitors the question how and why places function, and which impact the geographical environment has on perception and behavior. If you have, e.g., several possibilities to reach a supermarket, you would choose a certain route according to your mood.

During your daily life, you efficiently choose the shortest way, that unfortunately leads along a noisy, four-lane road. Then again, you deliberately look for a route, that leads you away from the actual place of destination taking you to interesting places, an abandoned house, an open terrain or a park at the city’s´ outskirts. However, losing your orientation and just strolling along, can also be seen as something positive, something that triggers your thirst for adventure and allows unexpected things to happen. Every one of us has his daily rituals, that are not only determined by functionality.

You can tell stories about some places, others you will seek because you feel comfortable there or because you are striving for a certain mood, or because the atmosphere and aura there bring back memories. Wandering around means getting lost, being active, collecting things you find in the street, getting onto a metro, the next bus and climbing out somewhere else, having deleted the common reason for getting from A to B. It means actively soaking up the terrain, the people, the animals or the trash in the streets. Without perspectives and intention, there is more to discover.

The participating artists show with alert eyes aesthetic glances of cities, peripheries, and surprising encounters. We are looking forward to present the works of Relfy (Can), Cyop & Kaf (It), Swampy (Usa), Bruno Rodrigues & Fábio Vieira (Bra), Road Dogs (Fr), Raskalov & Makhorov (Rus), LUCE & Eltono (Es).

Thanks a lot to Danny, K100, Marc and to the whole Colab crew..

Funambuls

Casal Solleric
Passeig del Born 27, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
April 2018

Curated by Jordi Pallarès

Mouldings:

Palma is full of architectural and decorative elements as interesting as they are peculiar. The artist select some of them to reproduced the space they generate cutting the three-dimensional negative space of these geometric fragments. They are shapes that one could easily touch and perfectly recognize with his finger. Wooden mouldings that the artist makes us locate and fit in while we discover others. A different look on the city aesthetic.

Rub:

One of the smallest street in the city has been intervened by the artist. Blue, red and green. The participants have to find it, rub their black backpacks on it and impregnate them with these colors. A dust that they will release immediately on the exhibition space walls with another body rub. A loading and downloading exercise where the contact of the body with the wall connects us with the city activity and leave some traces that talk about our presence in it. A subtle collective “pollination” that, beyond the possible accidents, wants to eliminate borders between indoor and outdoor while it gives back respect to the others and towards what’s on our back.

Random Itineraries:

By throwing a dice you can randomly stroll around the city. Randomness leads us into streets that we don’t usualy know while we’re playing and tracing the generated itinerary on a map. Absurd and persistent, open or closed, these broken lines show our activity when we act as funambulist. Geometric and irregular routes that, magnifying their scale, are reassigned and reinterpreted by the artist in the exhibition space.

Petrogliphs:

Following clues, the idea is to find images or signs that others carved in the walls’ stones. A calcareous stone typical from the Balearic Islands that register every type of interventions and erosion of the passing time. Walls where suggestive anonymous traces are detected and reproduced on paper. An activity that gives the opportunity to discover incisions as footprints accumulated by those that coincided in the same place transcending (beyond) time.

Chalk Line:

This activity consists in the making of a collective, generative and random mural drawing full of uncertain straight lines. Using the chalk line as a classic tool used in construction work, each participant marks a line that is the result of joining the coordinates of two points. Dice randomness choose the length and inclination of each line while the whip of the historic blue pigment marks the wall. The same pigment that is used to whitened clothes. Personalized distances that are traced with tension and liable to be returned to the street.

Exhibition view:

Pictures: Jordi Pallarès, Yago Marqués and Eltono
Graphic design: Javier Siquier

Palma Residency

Palma Festival
Le Pavillon, Caen, France
March 2018

www.palmafestival.com

15 days residency at the Pavillon on the tip of the Caen Peninsula.

Tourbillons:

Crossing the Orne river one day using the Orne-Boom (a boom built in 1908 that is used to regulate the tide) I realized that in font of each door, on the downstream side, the water was forming very powerful whirlpools. The next time I crossed the bridge I saw that the debris that had been floating the day before was still turning around in the same place. I understood that the whirlpools were so strong that any objects caught in them could barely escape. So, I decided to throw some art in one of the strongest whirlpools and see what would happen. After 5 days I decided to get them back and, after quite a lot of trouble, I managed to fish them all out of the water and bring them back to the exhibition space.

Random routes:

“Le Pavillon”, the venue where my residency took place and where I showed the results of my experiments in the street, is situated on the tip of the Caen Peninsula. It’s a very interesting area because it is surrounded by water (the St. Pierre Bassin, the Caen à la Mer Canal, the Orne river and the Victor Hugo canal) and currently it’s in the middle of a huge urban transformation. Modern constructions, old factories, abandoned buildings, designed green areas and waste land are all mixed together. This makes it an open space, well defined and perfect for aleatory wandering.

For this exercise, I defined 23 points at key spots around the area (building angles, crossroads and corners). The goal was to walk from one point to another choosing at random the next point. The route started at point n.º1, had to go through 10 points and finished again at point n.º1. The result of each stroll generated a design that was then converted into a wood sculpture using a laser at the local Dôme Fablab. Finally, I painted and exhibited them at the Pavillon. I traced 11 routes myself and 6 were traced by the participants of a workshop with the Fablab. Each sculpture represents a 30 to 40 minutes stroll on a distance from 2 to 3 km.