EXTERNAL RESOURCES AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
In this section, I will start talking about some places where I was able to share my work, outside of college facilities during the course of unit 2. These include external exhibitions. I will develop afterwards the tools I am currently working on and the tools and skills I plan to develop in order to prepare for when unit 3 is over. It is crucial to recognize the importance of collaboration and human connections in order to not only develop the work, but make it visible.
The first exhibition I participated in was the second edition of ICON. By the beginning of unit 2, I wasn’t yet aware of how to exhibit my work, so I paid a fee in order to be able to exhibit. The pieces I showed where self-portraits I took at a graveyard, as a way to explore my own nakedness in relation to death. The experience was not what I expected for different reasons, however, it was a righteous start.
Not only was the fee excessive, but the small space what cluttered with printed pieces, some them of pictorial work. This experience was a lesson regarding the impulse I have to apply to open calls. It is important to be able to select the right exhibitions, and the correct pieces for them. Also, receiving a “yes”, does not mean that the space is an adequate one. This experience helped me however to identify better opportunities and that is how, not much later I was able to exhibit in Espacio Gallery.
“This Art Exhibition” not only had a reasonable fee, but features fellow artist friends in a bigger space, with enough distancing – or reasonable enough –for the pieces to be appreciated individually. This opportunity, as well, allowed me to understand that there is a possibility for natural bonds to develop which can lead to new doors opening. I am also, currently, collating a list of relevant galleries and publishers to make contact with.
The “Dialogues” exhibition at UAL was an interesting space to show some pieces of work to test the reaction. I regret not being more comfortable with the pieces I exhibited which mainly happened because I felt neither of them were ready to be shown yet. It is not easy to show pieces publicly, but that is a natural anxiety a lot of artists have to deal with. Showing the work does not necessarily mean exposing yourself although with the naked graveyards screen-print, I felt like I was; and that was an interesting new input to navigate.
Dialogues Exhibition. Screenprint at the left. Interactive material piece to the right.
On an independent note, I also enjoy start doing collaborative work. I am conscious that a collaborative piece commercially is least appealable for a collector, however, I tend to ignore commercial standards and follow natural artistic processes and human connections. For the next unit, for example, I organized a side project with Giorgia Boller, a colleague from MA Print. We plan to share a big canvas and, rather than imitating each-others styles we plan to layer our own work on top in order to see how the piece naturally evolves. I find this sort of side projects crucial to my practice as well.
Going to exhibitions, art fairs and other events can become an opportunity to collect information to organize and potentially make further contact. For this project I decided to separate the data into the following categories: Name, Type (Gallery / Publisher / Collector or other), Email, Contact Name, Subject of Interest, Telephone, Location, Web and other relevant data.
As I mentioned before, my main interest is altering – or trying to alter – human perception and I am currently focusing on Birefringence and Photoelasticity as tools to explore human perception. To understand more how the light polarization and more specifically the birefringence phenomenon visualization process can help to represent not only luminous areas but scale, I contacted three photoelasticity PHD’s from UCL that work in the Material’s Library developing studies specifically relating to that subject. Being involved in an Interdisciplinary has always been a personal goal, so I intend to peruse my search for an opportunity like that.
Unfortunately, my follow up contact was ignored and neither the Dr I planned to talk to or her colleagues answered back. I plan, however, to continue looking to make contact with other specialists who study this phenomenon from other practices or expertise. I still have a lot of research to do and concepts to fully understand. I also have technical problems assembling the final piece I intend to show, so getting support from other experts is key not only for my practice, but for its further correct development.
Another important aspect I will be looking to develop is the one making my work more accessible. To make this possible I will try to finish the small edition of a photobook, not only to visualize some of my work in relation to other bits, but to create another tool witch which I can display visual ideas and aesthetics that I intend to share. This will, luckily, help me with the promotion of other further projects that will enrich the created universe.
I will, finally, leave some loose ideas, like I did in unit 1. These ideas are relevant but didn’t necessarily find a place in the platform’s requirements to be shown. They are not necessarily crucial but help, in my opinion, to understand the train of thought I went through during this unit. Sometimes, ideas are discarded or overlooked but can have rewarding insights when looking back at them:
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When they entered my installation someone afterwards recollected: “there was a lot going on” which showed me how little she understood about the artwork. Or maybe she understood it all, and I never did.
My work tends to be self-referential, which makes relatability part of another content layer that sometimes passes unnoticed. When I was a young kid, I enjoyed watching the sea for hours. There was a specific moment that I look back to and recall that I used to want to stay in a specific place forever. Later, as I grew up, this shifted entirely to the opposite direction. Curiosity drove me more than sedentarism could ever do, and I started to want to see everything, at the same time.
Of course, I still enjoy the beach.
Process wise I struggle with consistency. Not time-wise but medium wise, I tend to jump from one place to another with no apparent reason. Which can sometimes generate interesting connections and conversations, and sometimes not.
Sometimes the reactions I get feel weirder than the fact that I feel in that certain way. And that is exactly what social castration means. Normalized repression.
I’ve grown to get curious regarding curiosity, which I used to discard for considering it redundant, somehow. As if being curious didn’t allow you to explore curiosity.
I follow impulse, impulsive expression. Impulsivity. Impulsivism.
Like an over stimulated baby mantis shrimp.
Not equipped to understand
What is happening
