page_expo – Eltono

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.

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.

Anomalías

SET Espai d’Art
Plaza Miracle del mocadoret 4, Valencia, Spain
September 15th – November 11th 2017

www.setespaidart.com

I’m always looking for new systems to make the city part of my creative process. Each experiment I do is a series and, to be able to compare the results, I carry out these experiments very rigorously and methodically. In the process, I often find myself in strange situations, off-key from the reality that surrounds me. In the city’s routine, my actions can be perceived like anomalies. The generated artworks act as testimonies of the experience lived between the artist and the city.

6 aros (6 hoops)

This project started with a map of Valencia. I looked for itineraries with the most circular shape possible. I found six. I created a wooden sculpture from each itinerary. Subsequently, I walked each sculpture in the city on the very path it represents. Each walk varied from 1 to 6 km. I presented the sculptures as they were at the end of each walk.

Piedras pintadas (painted rocks)

I looked for rocks in the streets around the gallery. I found 14. For each one, I noted down the exact place where it was found. I brought the rocks to the studio and I painted them with 3 coats of 3 different colors. Then, I brought each one of them back to the place where I found it and from this point, I kicked it through the street until it entered by the gallery door.

Dibujos en la EMT (drawings in the bus)

Running away from the comfort and the security of the studio, I drew pictures while sitting inside the urban buses of the city of Valencia. I drew the same composition 12 times during 12 journeys on different bus lines. Every imperfection on the drawings are the result of the annoyance and discomfort produced by the movement of the trip. I not only had no absolute control over my drawings but I also had no control on where the bus was bringing me; at the end of each drawing, when I raised my head, most of the time I was totally lost.

La Ville et le Mouvement

Le Pilori visual arts space
Place du Pilori, Niort, France
September 27th – November 10th 2017
Exhibition organised for the 4e mur festival by Winterlong gallery.
Participating Artists: Jeroen Jongeleen and Eltono

www.winterlong-galerie.com

Détours

Six 20 minute random itineraries starting from the exhibition space door. At each intersection, a die is used to determine where to go. The result is materialised by six painted wooden sculptures.

RUFO

A painting is dragged in the street, with the painted side facing the floor. The route, a loop in the city, is fixed beforehand. The board is exhibited as if with a map showing the route.

G.A.S

Horizontal printing system using street movements. Each print is exposed to traffic for at least an hour.

Photos: Eric Surmont et Eltono
Videos: Victor Thiré

Downshifting

Redline Contemporary Art Center
2350 Arapahoe Street, Denver, U.S.A.
June 30th – July 23rd 2017

Modo n.º19

Curated by Ramón Bonilla, Downshifting is a group exhibition that calls attention to the meditative quality of reductive art, which encompasses minimal, post-minimal, hard edge and geometrical work. Reductive art work is typically explored in terms of formal qualities like medium, rarely conjuring conversations that respond or reflect on political realities. For many artists around the globe, however, reductive work can provide a sanctuary from the hyperactivity and sensory-flooding that has come to be our everyday reality.

Working with 12 internationally-based abstract and minimalist artists, Downshifting will transform RedLine’s 6,000-square-foot exhibition hall into a sanctuary of abstract works with programming that explores sensory deprivation rather than spectacle and provocation.

Participating Artists:
Eltono (France)
Louyse Blyton (Australia)
Ramón Bonilla (Puerto Rico)
Sandra Fettingis (USA)
Andrew Huffman (USA)
Kristofer Hultenberg (Denmark)
Michael Mork (Denmark)
Gary Andrew Clarke (England)
Ashley Frazier (USA)
SEIKON (Poland)
Hyland Mather (USA)
Frank T. Martinez (USA)