Horizontal printing system using street movements. Each print is exposed to traffic for at least one hour.
Photos: Eric Surmont et Eltono
Videos: Victor Thiré
SC Gallery
C/ Cortes 4, Bilbao, Spain
October 7 – November 25 2011
SC Gallery invited me to Bilbao to paint a mural for the BLV-art festival and to set-up a show in their gallery. This festival took place in Bilbao la Vieja neighborhood. I called the show Eredu which means “model” or “pattern” in Basque. My idea was to showcase different works all made using varying techniques that together highlight a common and characteristic pattern. The artworks presented were: four photographic enlargements of illegal paintings I had done in the street during my stay in Bilbao, mounted on dibond; five confetti and double sided tape compositions on Super-Alfa paper; thirty 10×15 cm documentation pictures of the mural I painted in Urazurrutia street #20; two prints out of my new Confetti edition and a painting on the rounded wall inside the gallery.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these pieces, please contact the gallery: www.scgallery.es
Ongoing project
Started in September 2011
I have always been fascinated by all the marks, traces and treads that our daily movements leave throughout a city. The idea behind TRACES is to observe and somehow try to register these types of marks. For this purpose, I am working on some experiments that allow for the possible appearance of shapes and lines by exploiting these daily movements.
The first experiment is called Gravure au sol (ground engraving). The idea was to generate graphic works using the city as a studio. The four first attempts with a satisfactory result were executed on the asphalt of three streets (one in France and two in China) registering the passage of cars, motorbikes, bikes and a few pedestrians.
Asphalt engraving on card, 18 cm x 28 cm.
13/09/2011 from 14h25 to 20h20, road D54, France.
Most of the marks were left by cars.
Asphalt engraving on Canson Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
14/09/2011 from 9h32 to 16h54, road D54, France.
Most of the marks were left by cars.
Asphalt engraving on Sumiaozhi-8K 160g Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
19/10/2011 from 15h00 to 16h19, 学院路 (Xueyuanlu), Beijing, China.
Most of the marks were left by bikes and bicycles.
Asphalt engraving on Sumiaozhi-8K 160g Paper, 18 cm x 28 cm.
24/10/2011 from 15h48 to 16h45, 展春园西路 (Zhanchunyuanxilu), Beijing, China.
Most of the marks were left by cars.
I am in the process of conducting further experiments at this time. As soon as I obtain some more interesting results, I will post more examples.
As the results for these first experiments from the TRACES project are recoverable, they will be available for purchase, with my other graphic works, at the Boutique on this website.
Urazurrutia street #20, Bilbao, Spain
September 2011
Mural painting commissioned by Sc Gallery
More about this project here: www.eltono.com/en/exhibitions/eredu
M van Museum
Leuven, Belgium
July 2011
Project in collaboration with MOMO
During summer 2011, I was invited to Leuven, Belgium, to participate in the first edition of Outomatic. This outdoor art festival was made possible by help from the M van Museum. Hans, the festival organizer, told me about all the empty flag posts visible throughout the city streets, and I instantaneously loved the idea to use them for a project. As I knew that MOMO was also participating in the festival, I asked him if he would like to collaborate with me using a process similar to the one we used during the PLAF project to design flags. We prepared 50 flags during the first five days and we hung them the sixth day in the afternoon. It took us a couple of hours to hang the flags and we worked without any kind of permit. This project is called Tiensestraat because it is named after the street where we put the flags. Today, while writing this page, more than a month after the installation, the flags are still flying…
We also painted a mural inside the M van Museum:
Thanks to Hans and the M van Museum.
Outomatic Festival
M van Museum, Leuven, Belgium
July 2011
Mural project on a wall of the M van Museum; in collaboration with MOMO – The full documentation of our participation in the festival is available here: www.eltono.com/en/projects/tiensestraat
La Quiñonera
Santa Cruz 111 Col. Candelaria, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
July 2011
Mural commissioned by Anonymous Gallery
On June 30th, 2011, the exhibition, Antes de la Resaca opened in the MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de México DF). The curators organized a retrospective of the spaces created, and innovative proposals put forth by Mexican artists during the 1980’s and 90’s such as La Quiñonera, Temistocles 44, and La Panaderia. The exhibition is a review of projects and artists who passed through those spaces and the work they produced. In conjunction, Nestor Quiñones organized the exhibition Espacios Flexibles in collaboration with Anonymous Gallery (New York) and La Curtiduria (Oaxaca) to give continuity to La Quiñonera as an exhibition space in parallel with the MUAC program.
Taking advantage of the fact that I was passing through Mexico on my way to the US and that Anonymous Gallery (the gallery that supported my PLAF project in 2008) was about to open a new space in the capital, they invited me to be a member of the exhibition “Espacios Flexibles”.
In the 1980’s, La Quiñonera was very important to Mexico’s national art scene and many well known artists who I admire passed through there as they began their career. It was a great honor for me to present my work in a space so beautiful and so meaningful. Hector and Nestor Quiñones, two distinguished brothers who have worked hard to make this project happen, took me in for four days and, with the help of all, I painted a wall in one of the terraces on the second floor.
Thank you very much Nestor, Hector, Rodolfo, Laura, Joseph, Paola and Zapata.
Art Re-Public Festival
Yoyogi Park, Harajuku,Tokyo, Japan
May 5th 2011
My last visit to Japan coincided with the Art Re-Public festival organized by my friend Yusaku. Over the past few years this festival has taken place in the streets of Tokyo to celebrate “Kodomo No Hi” or Children’s Day, an annual celebration throughout Japan. This year however, the festival took place in Yoyogi park in Harajuku.
I was offered the opportunity to do an installation at the event and decided to take advantage of the presence of so many children to do an experiment with one of my automatic painting projects. Four stations were prepared where people (mostly children) could choose randomly between 9 figures, 6 colors, 8 orientations and 289 positions. This choice was determined through a series of simple games. The experiment lasted 5 hours during which 85 people participated and 86 figures were painted.
This project would not have been possible without the help of Sierra Forest and the invitation and hospitality of Yusaku and his family. Thanks!
