maelstrom

In “Maelström”, a figure made of squares and trapezoids rotates at high speeds while gradually transforming, wrapped in veils, giving rise to various configurations, as if it were a mandala that continually changes. At the top and bottom of the canvas, squares and trapezoids move slowly.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

I associated the work “100 trapezes” by Vera Molnar, created in the 70s, with the Menhirs of Stonehenge built about 5000 years ago, and almost immediately questions, observations and relationships with the texts we worked on arose. Much of the early work with computers was based on work with primitive geometric figures, such as menhirs…Works by Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, and Lilian Schwartz make use of very simple shapes to obtain results of varying complexity. Points, lines, planes and figures constitute the essence of plastic representations since they began to be made. The contexts, resources, media, supports change, but the essence remains unchanged. From huge stones to representations on fabric or digital screens, there are thousands of years of art united by basic shapes. Stone, wood, glass, paper, screens, earth, plastic, materials, some more recent and others as old as the planet, were and are in use to generate works of all kinds.

Valery preannounces in his writing that the media revolution is going to prodigiously modify the very idea of ​​art, while Brea says in one of his writings that “there are no more “works of art” or artists as such”… Danto maintains something similar, saying that we are in the “era after the end of art.” Arthur Danto himself also proposes the distinction of an “age of art”, and an “age before art”, coincidentally the longest of the three. That is to say, the concept of “art” and “artist” commonly accepted even today did not last more than 600 years, very little compared to five or six millennia of history of artistic production.

Did those who created Stonehenge, or the pyramids, or the cave paintings consider themselves artists? Were they making art? In light of the reflections of these critics, it would seem not. However, for us, they are works or artistic expressions. And during all this time the notion and models of art changed many times.

Again I quote José Luis Brea; “We are interested in investigating the growing inadequacy of the old spatialized devices for articulating the social representation of artistic practices (museums, art galleries)…

Today digitalization is a novelty, which coexists with already known forms of production. It is evident that the circulation of art will change, that there will be new ways of seeing, presenting, and selling productions, and everyone involved will have to adapt.

Literature

VALÉRY, Paul. ([1960], 1999). La conquista de la ubicuidad (1928). En Piezas sobre arte. Madrid: Visor, pp.131-133

BREA, José Luis-LSA47. (2008). Redefinición de las prácticas artísticas s21.pdf