1 KM.

During the confinement established to face the COVID-19 crisis in France, a rule was put into place that permitted “brief displacements, within the limit of one hour daily and within a maximum radius of one kilometer around the place of residence”. (https://media.interieur.gouv.fr/deplacement-covid-19/).

Following this rule, I traced a 1 km radius circle on a map around my house and decided to walk on each and every path I could to reach the imposed limit. Arriving at the “border”, I drew a line on the floor. Once the legal limit of my movements was marked, I turned around and walked back home before reaching the one hour time limit.

The result are fragments of a circle delimiting my personal border. The distance is based on the position of one’s house, so each person has their own border. My goal was to reach this intangible limit and, from there, contemplate the temporarily inaccessible beyond.

I finished the 1 KM. project on May 10th 2020, one day before the end of the confinement in France. I reached 21 border points and wandered around 60 km in total.

A huge documentation is available below. You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

P1

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

P2

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
32 minutes round trip

P3

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
44 minutes round trip

P4

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
32 minutes round trip

P5

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,5 km
44 minutes round trip

P6

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,2 km
38 minutes round trip

P7

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
44 minutes round trip

P8

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,5 km
46 minutes round trip

P9

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
46 minutes round trip

P10

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
44 minutes round trip

P11

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
42 minutes round trip

P12

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
42 minutes round trip

P13

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 2,1 km
50 minutes round trip

P14

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,6 km
42 minutes round trip

P15

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

P16

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,3 km
35 minutes round trip

P17

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
34 minutes round trip

P18

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,8 km
45 minutes round trip

P19

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,7 km
38 minutes round trip

P20

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 2,1 km
52 minutes round trip

P21

Straight line distance from home: 1 km
Walking distance from home: 1,4 km
36 minutes round trip

“DMA”, Aleatory Mechanical Drawings

3 color Aleatory Mechanical Drawings 16 x 24 cm (6.3 x 9.4 inches). Archival ink on Canson Montval 300 g. paper (acid free). Series of monotypes, the generative system creates a unique drawing each time.

The DMA drawings are composed of three layers traced one on top of the other, each one has a different color. For each layer, the shapes, their position and their rotation are generated randomly. This protocol works on a 2 x 3 grid with 5 shapes, 6 positions, 8 rotations and 2 orientations for the stripes. Following these parameters, the program creates a code that is sent to the machine on which a pen is mounted. Each layer uses a different color, so the pen has to be manually changed for each new one.

On sale here: www.eltono.com/boutique.

Video of the process:

Pictures of the first DMAs:

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..

Trames I & II

Composition on tramway
Échappées d’art, Angers, France
Project curated by Winterlong gallery
Summer 2018

Pictures: Thierry Bonnet – Ville d’Angers

“7Y7R7B”

Generative wood block printing
Series of 8 monotypes
Printed at Center Street Studio, Boston, MA, USA
November 2017

www.centerstreetstudio.com

On sale exclusively at www.centerstreetstudio.com

Random Routes

Palma Festival Residency
Le Pavillon, Caen, France
March 2018

“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.

Tourbillons

Palma Festival Residency
Le Pavillon, Caen, France
March 2018

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.

Mouldings

Casal Solleric
Solo show Funambuls
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
April 2018

Palma is full of architectural and decorative elements as interesting as they are peculiar. The artist select some of them to reproduce 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.