Flying Being, handmade ceramic, painted and glazed. 20 x 25 cm. This is one of two pieces I developed for this project and it was loosely inspired by the zoomorphic characters that populate the material remains we have found of the Paracas, Nazca and Moche - among many others- societies. Yet this reinvention is nothing but a mirage that tries to grasp the connection with that elusive past.
The piece, made by Liz Ramos-Prado @liz_rprado , has been painted in red and white colors over white clay, that got a darker tone after entering the kiln, revealing the white characters in the background that were almost invisible at the time of painting.
Thank you to Liz Ramos Prado for the invitation to create this collaborative piece, where she made the pre-Columbian inspired pieces and offered them as a canvas for the artists, each one of who answered to this call with their own creative impulses.
Nov 27th has been the last day of the WAKOS exhibition, an amazing opportunity to gather a group of talented artists from UAE and Peru, their visions and approaches, realized thanks to the kind hospitality of the Ismaili Centre and the auspicious support of the Consulate of Peru in Dubai @consulateofperu.dubai through the consul Katia Angeles and her team (Abir, Gianina and Juan Carlos)
A-B=C, at Alserkal Avenue March 2022 comission.
3 videoprojections/videoinstallations spread across the site.
Image: detail of The three races, by Francisco Laso (1823-1869), part of the videos projected across the site.
As Kevin Jones, the comission's curator, puts it :
"The image is a kinetic trompe l’oeil, built line-by-line at high speed, like a turbo-charged zoetrope, yet perceived as a continuous spectre.
In this work, the eye retains the projected image, even if objects placed before it ‘break’ its integrity.
The will to persevere, the drive to remain, to resist ephemerality—we share this with the image’s tumultuous self.
This captured piece of time is shaped by the hands of space, light, and electric colour.
The work encapsulates movement while playing with fleeting meaning: this triptych of installations dotting Alserkal Avenue, like all images, squirms under the unstable dynamics of interpretation."- .
A paralell discourse about the definition of the Other runs through images of Western tradition. Thanks to Kevin Jones, Fiza, Dima Tatan and Bestin for their patience and support #alserkalavenue #videoart #gefercan #deleuze #movementimage #ephemerality #dubaiartseason #installationart #videoinstallation #creativedubai #artseason2022 #alserkalartweek #dubaiculture #contemporaryart #dubaiculture #franciscolaso
A process of destruction and manipulation on clay. A visible hand, pushing and pulling a malleable matter, here and there, recorded. The original shape is gone. #videoart #videoimage #videomoment
Hidden among the narrow corridors, in between the gypsum houses of the Shindagha neighbourhood at the heart of old Dubai, you will find "Flow", -my latest mural- a composition about the future and technology.
It was an honor to explain my work to HH Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Culture as part of her visit of the festival.
Thanks to Moza Lootah, @mozahhl the curator behind the public mural programe in this edition of the Sikka Art Festival @sikkaplatform , for her trust in my work, as well as -and specially- to Ghada Mehdi @artbyghadamehdi , from @roomfivecreativefacility , for inviting me to participate in this edition, also for her continuous patience and support in the days preceding the opening, days full of that creative vertigo that is so ambiguously dear to every artist.
#dubaiartseason #dubaiculture #creativedubai
Favouring a non-linear narrative, sometimes the diagram appears as an interface of sorts and as hypertextual device.
The perception of the evident shape already transmits knowledge. Every node is the beginning and an entry point, as well as a continuation of paths already started.
Here, on a network diagram, formed by nodes and links, stay the connections to pages of more information (in this case, the Wikipedia pages about Renaissance artists). An individual, the artist, might migrate and move across these centers where more opportunities arise, looking for patrons and comissions, moving away from agitated areas.
Exploring here some graphic types, to map the basic info I have about artists and their centers of attraction ( Florence, Rome, Venice) in Renaissance Italy.
First using apps as that helped me to shape the data, and then with the help of LLMs such as ClaudeAI and ChatGPT. The attempts with the former were better than the latter in term of outputs. In some regard, it is still like before, reading and tweaking here and there until arriving to some convincing result and knowing how to read between the lines, as always is when dealing with code.
datavisualization, diagrams, information design, infographics, vannevar bush , digital humanities
To see is to believe, but also to understand. And to understand the nature of a building, you recreate proportions, views and elements to get a notion of its three-dimensional nature, complementing each piece of information that you get trough pictures, planes and section drawings. That is why being in (inside/outside) a building is an irreplaceable experience, but if not possible, building a model of it could be a second-best.
Out of curiosity, I started building a small model of the simetrical and delicate proportions of Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice), understanding the rationale behind its style.
Then, I continued with the cathedral of Cusco (Peru). To my surprise, beyond the general context, the details of the morphology of two the buildings couldn't be more different.
Palladio's structure filled the expected harmony we associate with their historical period tradition.
The Andean church, on the other hand, massive and bold, shows in each step of the structure was a continuous compromise between landscape and traditions, a canon squezed between the mountains, a model projecting its aesthetic authority in another land far away. A building in a lake and a building in the mountains.
Maybe it is not fair to compare a renacentist Palladio with the gothic baroque of the Andes, but there is something in the stretched, squezed vaults and blueprints of the buildings of the New World that defies the baroque modernity of its context. It is also makes easier to understand the words of Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in The Kingdom of this world and its preface christening what was going to be known as magic realism in a precuel of the literary Latinamerican "boom"; namely the fascination with the out of proportions landscape and the clash of reason and magic in the realm of the New World.
Every style twisted or lost in translation became a sign of this struggle. #blender #architecture #baroque #palladio #3dmodelling
1-S. Giorgio, side view
2-Cusco cathedral
3-Cusco cathedral, side view, detail
4- S Giorgio top view
Sikka 2025 has been quite an experience. Thanks to @artbyghadamehdi for the opportunity to work with her and participate in this project along a group of talented emirati artists such as Khawla Darwish @khawladarwish , @hessaalawadhi Hessa Al Awadhi, Myriam Al Ramsi and Rashid Al Mulla @rashid.a.almulla . This project was a bright collaboration between @sikkaartplatform and @windrisesdubai , brought together by @roomfive and @darialeover . As they say, the best treasure is the people you meet along the way.
Copy as learning. Drawings. Pen on paper. After Velasquez and Van Dyck. Copying was crucial to the learning process in the painter's workshop. Repeating each movement, each shape, each colour, each composition. It could be done blindly and mechanically, but also consciously and reflexively. First, you train your hand and your reflexes, your "muscle/eye " memory. But also, you see every brushstroke, in every line of the drawing, as part of a dialogue with the past. An interview. Why put that colour in that place? Why make the eyes like that? and then, as the painting progresses, find the answers.
The masks, mixed media on canvas. Give a man a mask and he will reveal himself says the adage. 50 x 40 cm aprox #drawing #dibujo #dubaiculture #creativedubai #fndesigns #alserkalavenue many mask for the frightened character surrounded by the demons of the daily life, of the inviable, invisible future and of course of the foggy past
