Category: page_automatic

Path Mural

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Deambular (Wandering)
Artium, Basque Museum of Contemporary Art
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
July 6th – September 2nd 2012

Praxis Project: Curated by Blanca de la Torre – Production coordination by Yolanda de Egoscozabal

Deambular – Actions in the public space of Vitoria-Gasteiz and in the exhibition space
Control center and exhibition space: Praxis, North Gallery, ARTIUM
Curators: Sergio García and Javier Abarca

See the whole project here: www.eltono.com/en/exhibitions/deambular

Paths Mural Painting:

Every morning on the museum’s wall, using the correspondent color, I painted the path I have been walking the day before. Using masking tape, the drawing was stylized and simplified. I added a rule: the more I transited a street during that day, the thicker I had to paint the line. This uncontrolled mural evolved everyday during the 12 days of the residency. The idea was to generate a wall painting in which the final appearance was out of my control and to appreciate the result as a whole abstract painting and not like individual maps.

I used a large paper map to transfer the daily paths from my notebook to the museum wall. This graphic transfer process generated a huge quantity of colored dots (the ones I was marking and following as guides to paint the lines on the wall). The large map proved to be a faithful replica of the map I was creating while sticking the colored dots everyday in the city. This large piece, called Matrix Map, was left on the floor of the museum in the middle of the room – the same place it could be found during the time I was working in the museum.

Automatic Painting

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Art Re-Public Festival
Yoyogi Park, Harajuku,Tokyo, Japan
May 5th 2011

My last visit to Japan coincided with the Art Re-Public festival organized by my friend Yusaku. Over the past few years this festival has taken place in the streets of Tokyo to celebrate “Kodomo No Hi” or Children’s Day, an annual celebration throughout Japan. This year however, the festival took place in Yoyogi park in Harajuku.

I was offered the opportunity to do an installation at the event and decided to take advantage of the presence of so many children to do an experiment with one of my automatic painting projects. Four stations were prepared where people (mostly children) could choose randomly between 9 figures, 6 colors, 8 orientations and 289 positions. This choice was determined through a series of simple games. The experiment lasted 5 hours during which 85 people participated and 86 figures were painted.

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This project would not have been possible without the help of Sierra Forest and the invitation and hospitality of Yusaku and his family. Thanks!

Modular Do Lage

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Nova Cultura Contempôranea
Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
March 21st – April 30th 2011

Project in collaboration with MOMO
www.vimeopro.com/rojo/nova-rio2011

In April 2011, I participated in Nova Rio Contemporary Culture, an event organized by Rojo in Rio de Janeiro. My friend (and artist whom I greatly admire) MOMO was also one of the artists invited. The organizers suggested we work together to produce an installation that would be exhibited at the Parque Lage. I had visited the Parque Lage six years before and it always struck me as one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in Brazil. So of course I was very excited when I heard that I was going to have the opportunity to create art in this amazing place together with (for the second time) MOMO!

We had access to a workshop in a building within the School of Visual Arts (which is located in a palace in the middle of the park) and a large amount of unused wood. We started thinking about using this wood in different ways, always keeping in mind that we would construct something non-static and movable. Then we started working on the idea of a modular sculpture that could change constantly. After various tests with different models, we manufactured 23 pieces of wood that could be joined together in a variety of ways. Each piece was designed to fit with any or all of the other pieces. However, we soon found that the possibilities were limited by the condition of the wood, so we tried all the combinations that gravity allowed in the vicinity of our workshop, the gardens and the park. After a week we left four sculptures in the jungle to spend time with the local fauna!

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Thank you very much David, the whole team and all the Nova artists.

Script 1.2

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Sala de Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid
Av. América 13, Madrid
April to August 2010

Curated by Isra Souza and Rafafans

The full report of the exhibition can be consulted here: www.eltono.com/en/exhibitions/sala-de-arte-joven-2-0

The first Script experiment, Script 1.0, took place at the Spanish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires in April 2010. Script 1.1 was run in Delimbo Gallery in Seville in April 2010 as well. With the same idea, I started Script 1.2 for my show in Sala de Arte Joven 2.0. The idea was to paint the largest wall in the gallery between all participants. Each collaborator chose a color and painted stripes following precise rules. Thus each individual executed the script while at the same time watched as the mural was “automatically” painted.

A grid was marked on the wall and each person chose the color they wanted. Before beginning to paint, a random process was used to give each person a coordinate for their line (x, y) so they would know their starting point and direction.

Over the course of 7 days, 30 lines were painted in 12 different colors by 12 people.

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Thanks a lot to: Carmen y Tono (el verdadero), Julio, Ana Paula, Jaime, Clara, Hoffa, Lore, Mónica, Rafa, Rocío, Guillermo, Pablo, Laura, Dani, Sierra, Tere, Bea, Elsa, Parsec, Jesús, Alvaro, Dane, Isra, Rafafans, María, Pepito, Encarna Fernández, Justo Sánchez-Manzano, Ana Isabel Illanes, Emilio Camacho, Eduardo de la Fuente…

Script 1.1

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Delimbo Artspace
Calle Pérez Galdós nº 1, Sevilla, Spain
May 14th – July 15th 2010

The Reticula exhibition is the study of a union between calculated geometric forms and uncontrolled factors such as wear caused by spontaneous actions produced by pedestrians. Through experiments in the streets of Seville, I observed how these external factors were affecting the works installed in the street while at the same time influencing the results that would be presented in the gallery.

Script 1.1, Mural Descontrolado (Uncontrolled Mural)

The SCRIPT project (see Script 1.0) consists of murals painted by following a set of predefined rules determined by the artist. Thus, the development of the work is done in an uncontrolled manner and the end result is unexpected.
In this way, the artist is a spectator in his own artwork, and can be surprised by the outcome.

To run the script in Sevilla, I drew a grid on the wall where, according to the results obtained, the lines would be drawn. Each line depended on four elements:

1 – A horizontal coordinate (a letter)
2 – A vertical coordinate (a number)
3 – A color
4 – A direction (an arrow)
For example: E, 7, yellow, vertical upward.

I decided to leave the choice (though unconscious) of these four elements to the pedestrians. I stapled sheets of paper arranged in four groups (one for each item) in the street. Each group made a sort of mini-notebook from which the leaves could be torn. In this manner the combinations that defined the lines of the mural were formed on there own. I walked around the city to record the state of the papers between four and six times a day. I only wrote down the codes generated on a site where at least one paper had been torn. Each time a new combination was generated, I wrote it down in a notebook in the order in which it was seen. The day before the opening, we reviewed all the combinations and painted each line in the order in which it was documented.

The experiment lasted five days and 19 lines were painted.

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(Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Script 1.0

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Intervenciones Urbanas Iberoamericanas
CCEBA, Centro Cultural de España en Buenos Aires
Sede Balcarce 1150, San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Abril 2010

“Intervenciones Urbanas Iberoamericanas se define como muestra de acción usualmente exterior, en un interior, tomando provecho de los muros aún en construcción, del edificio de la nueva sede CCEBA San Telmo.” www.cceba.org.ar

El proyecto SCRIPT consiste en pintar murales ejecutando reglas predefinidas por el artista. Así el desarrollo de la obra se hace de forma descontrolada y el resultado final es inesperado. De esa forma, el propio artista puede ser sorprendido y se encuentra en la posición de espectador de su propia obra.

Fue invitado por la embajada española para participar en la muestra donde me dieron una sala vacía para desarrollar mi intervención. A partir de allí, pensé en hacer mi primer experimento SCRIPT o de “pintura descontrolada”. La idea era de pintar líneas que daban la vuelta a la habitación de forma automática. Antes de empezar a pintar, establecí unas normas que iban a dirigir el desarrollo de la pintura:

1- Cada línea empieza en la primera pared a la izquierda y acaba cuando vuelve al ese mismo sitio.
2- La altura donde empieza cada línea depende de la hora a la que se empieza a pintarla (gráfico 1).
3- La inclinación con la que empieza cada línea es definida según los minutos que indica el reloj a la hora de empezar a trazarla (gráfico 2).
4- Cada línea rebota contra el suelo y el techo con un angulo a 90 grados.
5- Al encontrarse con un cambio de plano, la línea sigue con la misma inclinación pero cambia de color.
6- La última cifra de la hora define el color que hay que usar (gráfico 3).

Una vez el script escrito y los gráficos y tablas correspondientes dibujados, solo faltó ejecutarlo.

El experimento duró cinco días y se logró pintar cinco líneas.

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Muchas gracias a Magda, Barbara y Martín por la preciada ayuda y a todo el equipo del CCEBA.