Thursday 23 March 2017

On Tiempo, Banff and Rome. And others


Time crystals! Wow, that is indeed fascinating. I should give it some thought.

Well, let’s say that here at the Banff Centre the breath taking environment leads one to consider the practice of drawing and mark making in a more holistic manner if that makes sense. One fascinating element is how the sky and the mountains merge (because of the clouds and the snow in the peaks).
 (Still from a video)

I have been tracking the weather (metaphorically speaking) and decided on three colors that seem to represent the place (very much like I was doing in the Slowtrack project but even more so in the pieces I was working on in Rome, where I tried to figure out the colors that represent the city, whether it is a vertical or horizontal place, and also what type of mark making would be adequate (turns out that I needed and interrupted line)).



So, as I was saying, I started making barely visible drawings and movies that wouldn't move. The form of mark making here is dictated by the trees, which dominate the landscape and make it distinct. 




I am now trying to come up with some measuring devices. Stay tuned!






Friday 10 March 2017

El tiempo and oscillating matter

Gosh that's a much more elegant way of thinking about time than the economic slant of the metaphors we use when we talk about time in English. 


I wondered if this meteorological approach underpinned the new body of work you're producing in Canada? Your photos of the view were extraordinary and intriguing, and I wondered how the project was linked to or developed the Slowtrack drawings?

In other news, time crystals have been announced to the world. I wonder if it's possible to draw with them?!





Sunday 29 January 2017

A response to Time



Steph, I do find your comments very interesting and pertinent. As for time, in articular, I like to think of it as Michel Serres does: in meteorological terms.  In Spanish (as well as in French and other Romance languages) we use the same word, time, to refer to both chronological time and to meteorological one (what in English you call weather). This assumes that the nature of time is chaotic, multidimensional and topological rather than geometrical (as you suggest and Bergson pointed out, classical time is related to metrics, to its measurement, and has nothing to do with space). So I would say that there is indeed a sense of temporal depth in what I am trying to achieve while drawing. If such making allows for contemplative time in the viewer the better, although I wouldn’t know.

I would have to think about your second point … In my case, the importance of drawing has always lain in it being a gesture that allows for a certain form thinking to be manifested (that is, drawing as a gesture that gives an idea an aesthetic form). It is only recently that I have realized that drawing represents a very specific ‘occupation of time’.

Friday 27 January 2017

Time: a response to new works for SLOWTRACK

In response to Laura's last post I've been thinking about two particular points, both related to time. Firstly the fragmentation and spatialisation of time that, for Fredric Jameson, defined the present in postmodernism. It's sneaked onto my radar recently, in several guises but mainly in relation to the aspect of critical thinking that returns to history to quietly check up on the things presented to us. Even if this is a spatial sense of history as a map, in order to reflect on our position in relation to larger conceptual structures. In my defence I'm an illustrator and that's how I process things!

But that's another avenue entirely*, when what I'm wondering in relation to these drawings is whether (in your shift from small to enormous drawings) the sheer scale of the things offers the possibility of adding depth of time (more Bergsonian, maybe?) to a spatial form. Is drawing a way of redeeming spatial time in that respect? Developing it into something productive, in that it gives us viewers a pocket of contemplative time?


*But one that might help to explain my preoccupation with pauses in this post!


The other point that sprang to mind was the sheer brilliance of drawing as some sort of lingua franca (or perhaps it's time as a Rosetta Stone of a concept) for us practitioner-researchers. To explain; I've been to more interdisciplinary conferences in the past year, and the role of the discourse familiar to different disciplines in defining (and potentially excluding) membership has become more apparent. I mention this not as someone in some sort of academic sulk, but in terms of its potential to limit research. We discussed the problem of talking at cross purposes without really being sure of what we'd agreed upon, if we discussed concepts without reference to specific examples to develop our shared understanding. It was the self-made trap in my SAR conference paper! But time has been something that has enabled us to talk about drawing across disciplines. And in turn drawing has enabled us to see each other's perspective on time, even if we can't always articulate its complexity in words. 


At any rate, these thoughts are clumsy and still drying, and are very much open to reworking! Over to you, Laura and Lynn, if there's something in here to pursue or take in a different direction entirely. 

Tuesday 10 January 2017

Preliminary thoughts


The particular body of work Stephanie saw in my studio back in November 2016 might have come to its end as I just finished the five big-scale drawings (120x250 cm) on drywall that will constitute a fundamental part of my upcoming show at Slowtrack (Madrid).   

Work in progress. January 2017.

Fundamental to the show is the publication of Atmospheric Meditations. Before the Present (338U- 710 U)  a book that includes two years worth of drawings: that is, all the paper pieces I have done since my exploration on atmospheric conditions began.







In February 2015 I was invited by El Museo de Los Sures (New York City) to develop a project that grappled with the specifics of the place where El Museo is located. Situated in Williamsburg, a highly gentrified neighborhood that is undergoing major changes, El Museo has emerged as a space of resistance as its fundamental mission is to keep the memory of the neighborhood alive. Faced which such setting it became clear to me that my explorations had to focus on the fundamental conditions that allow life to happen and thrive and so air and water became fundamental. Mine became thus an investigation on oceanic and atmospheric conditions, on how they could be rendered visible, and it started as a collection of dots (sometimes bubbles) and lines, and had no colors.
Wave 1: East River. 26.07.2014-11.08.2014. Drawing on paper. 21x29,7. 2014


At a certain point I began filming the snow falling against the grey NYC sky. In the videos, the wind turned the snowflakes into white lines, which seemed like a perfect form of mark making. It was then that white lines emerged as the quintessential form of rendering the air visible, of making it explicit while allowing for time to be registered. Each flake was suspended in its journey to the ground, each stroke a recorded instant. 

Snowdrawings1. Drawing on paper. 15,2 x 22,9 cm. 2015

From that moment on I adopted this form of drawing: a succession of white lines entered my repertoire of minimal mark making. Since then my work has grappled with stretching and expanding what this form of marking might mean.

Pantone. Drawing on paint on wall.  45 x 265 cm. 2016. Installation view at Saint Roc’s Chapel, Valls (Tarragona, Spain). Photo by Alba Rodriguez


Pantone. 60% Grey Sky. Drawing on pain on wall (detail).  93 x 54 cm. 2016. Installation view at Saint Roc’s Chapel, Valls (Tarragona, Spain). Photo by Alba Rodriguez