Second Week’s IG Artist in Residence from Saturday 30th January to Friday the 5th 2021
By : Yole Quintero
For complete information please visit ENCOUNTERS ART SPACE
Day 1
I’m @yole.qr and I’ll be taking over the 2nd week of the #EncountersIGResidency.
I’m thrilled to present two of the most stimulating and innovative artists from Encounters: @flortro and @elizabethcemborain
Both Flor and Elizabeth have a particular way of approaching their practices, their media are -to a certain extent- opposite to each other, but at the same time, they both speak to me from a core angle: the study and inclusion of colour and light, and the digital and analogue connection as a way of communicating ideas.
I will be developing a reflection and a dialog about their work and how I feel they connect to each other as well as how they inspire my own work.
Day 2
Today we’re a analysing the parallelisms between these 2 artworks “Blue” (@flortro) and “Hexa rhythm 15” (@elizabethcemborain)
The keyword is #Landscape. While “Hexa rhythm 15” is taken from an enlarged video frame, “Blue” is a traditional painting. However, both have something peculiarly common: The city of #Miami
Even though is not explicit, @Flortro “Blue” was created in Miami in 2015. For “Hexa Rhythm 15”, @elizabethcemborain was taken in Miami. Perhaps a coincidence, but I see many dots connected.
To me what resonate the most is the #boxed landscape, obviously compelled by the shades of bright blues in both pieces, but the structure of the boxes itself makes me wonder how we visualise the landscape. Whereas Cemborain’s is a complete structure, native of a big city, Troconis descontextualizases the city to create an organic environment. Both human and machine.
We cannot deny other elements present in these pieces, which at the same time help us to understand the underlying connection between both artist: the abstraction, reconfiguration, architecture and shapes
Day 3
The keyword today is: #Iconography. Thinking about yesterday’s post about #landscape, today we combine the landscape to iconography.
Say for example that you think about #Paris, first thing that comes to your mind is the #EiffelTower, and if I say #NYC, maybe you think about the #EmpireState, but if I say #Caracas... perhaps only a few bunch from the contemporary Caracas can tell you that, apart from the imposing Avila Mountain, a few icons appeared over the year, far away from the romantic idea of a Big Ben or the Pisa tower, we do have our own tower that became an icon of the most astringent period or our contemporary history as a city: The David Tower.
The abstract representation of the tower painted by @flortro reflects in its intense colours a reality that it’s unknown to many.
On the other hand, we have @elizabethcemborain “Contenedores” series.
Diametrically opposed, Cemborain expresses another incredible landscape: Containers. The representation of the wealth of a country. However, I don’t know why I can feel some sort of emptiness represented here. Maybe it’s matter of perspective but this is how I feel it.
What amazes me the most is that both works are pieces of iconography that represents the heaviness of a country that somehow screams to be heard, perhaps through colours and abstraction, light and melancholy.
Day 4
I only have a few days left of my virtual residency and for as much I’d love to expand on all my favourite pieces along with an analysis of them, I’m also conscious of the precious space I have here and the goal of highlighting the most striking bits of both artist.
Today I decided to dedicate this post to @elizabethcemborain. I met Elizabeth in the 2017 edition of @encountersartspace and I’m not going to lie when I say that I immediately fell in love with her work. Her work is impecable and beautifully presented, maybe for this it catched my attention as the work I saw is mainly produced digitally.
It’s clear to me that “the poor image” (Define by #HitoSteyerl) is defended with Elizabeth’s work. Not only visually mesmerising but incredibly profound on its core.
Elizabeth is well know for her work with the enlarged frames from videos, an smart approach to a reality through abstraction to the maximum level.
However, I fell in love again with Elizabeth’s work when I saw her work for @dialogoconustedes, hands down my favourite work so far.
Elizabeth’s work with the digital masks brought me to my inner artist, my own practice and my eternal questioning about identity, how something so simple can change completely the perspective of our identity? Nowadays with the infinite amount of digital masks available, the possibilities are endless.
Elizabeth’s work doesn’t end there, she’s expanding her practice by incorporating more and more identities to her projects, either using a mask or having a dialogue with her, it takes the shape of the protagonist with Elizabeth’s own identity and interpretation.
In short, what Elizabeth is doing is what I think the future is: a mix of reality so close to the virtual that it can be really hard to differentiate
Day 5
Today I’m back to the dialogue between @elizabethcemborain and @flortro ‘s work.
Just right before closing this week, I wouldn’t be able to finish if I didn’t mention the profound influence of #KineticArt and its significant touch on contemporary Venezuelan artists.
There’s a natural rhythm on these pieces when we see them, the colours, the shapes are close enough to evoque the very core of the #Kinetic masters and this popular art movement. Between the roughness and instinct there’s a liberating feeling and a delicate coincidence that allow us to connect to the natural movement of these pieces. I truly wonder about the feeling of these pieces together in the same space and how they can create movement with their structure, a boost of dopamine! - This is something that I see with Cemborain and Troconis work, and certainly a good example of contemporary representation of kinetic art.
I’ve chosen these two pieces because, not only they are a good example of this influence, but also because I feel they are connected to each other with the colours and shape. Somehow they express emptiness with the strong black blocks, but a tenderness with its bright colours; and myself being an obsessive artist with the circle shape, the rectangle gives me a frame to create a defined visual structure.
This is it for today. Tomorrow the conclusion of my reflections this week and the final post where I will be sharing my absolute favourites from Cemborain and Troconis.
Day 6 The day has arrived and it is now my time to say good bye to this week of reflection. I will close this week with my last reflection: The female gaze. We explored a good range of characteristics from @elizabethcemborain and @flortro ‘s work, but I saved this one for last because I’d love to highlight the importance of the female gaze. Please have a look to some of the sketches from Elizabeth and Flor. The ideation process started with simple elements that step by step take form into complex pieces of art. And it’s this complexity that invites us to go deeper and submerge ourselves into the world of abstract art, to lose ourselves and to create worlds seeing them through the female artist gaze. When I talk about the female gaze I’m referring to the point beyond the obvious delicacy, I’d like to invite you to think more of the inner core of these worlds created and transformed into art; unfortunately this keeps being a field that is broadly dominated by male artists and the input and output is still highly manipulated both ideologically and commercially, so now it’s the time to embrace the female gaze, more than ever. It takes courage and a huge effort to confront this challenge and make a difference, and Elizabeth and Flor are an excellent example of this. So as promised, I’m sharing with you my favourite 2 from @elizabethcemborain and @flortro, but I won’t go down too deep, I like them because I just like them, and if anything, if a piece of art resonate with us, wether is conceptually, aesthetically or a mixture of everything, then art achieved its purpose. Thank you again to all of you to joining me this week, thanks to @ElizabethCemborain and @flortro for allowing me to reflect and homage their work and of course, thanks to #MiladysParejo, encounters Director, for the opportunity of this very first encounters IG residence
👉I also had my Artist in Residence on the 5th week and started on Saturday 20th February until Friday the 26th 2021👈
I decided to work with Isabel Cisneros and Yole Quintero.
They are Venezuelan artists whose investigations I find extremely amazing, expressing both concerns and interests about technology from a very feminine perspective, even though their practices may be diametrically different. I presented fragments of their work in separate publications.
For complete information, please visit Encounters Art Space Instagram and Isabel Cisneros web page
