Galería RGR is pleased to present Convergences, an unprecedented project between the artists Elias Crespin (Venezuela, 1965) and Felipe Pantone (Argentina, 1986). The exhibition, accompanied by a text by curator Tania Aedo (Mexico, 1968), brings together 20 works, including two pieces made in collaboration by both artists, specially for the exhibition.
The pieces on display converge on two broad and different investigations that the artists have carried out, individually, for a long time. The proposal reflects on the repercussions of technology on the constitution of the artistic object and the way in which we process visual information in current times.
Elias Crespin has developed a practice that revolves around the joint of two universes: art and programming. His mobile sculptures are made up of metallic elements suspended by nylon threads that together form geometric figures. Using computer programming, Crespin manages to make the figures move in complex choreographies. The movements produced by the pieces break the notion of strict geometry, presenting open and unstable figures.
For his part, Felipe Pantone maintains an artistic practice in which urban and digital art come together. His work deals with dynamism, the digital revolution, the ephemeral, and the swift; topics related to our present. The glitch, the iridescence or the distortion are important components of his unique language.
For Tania Aedo, the exhibition emerges as a "disturbance", which is perceptible to the human eye as a subtle collision of elements particular to the work of each artist: color gradients and a highly contrasted palette —constant in Pantone's work— and the precise choreography indicated by the motor programming, typical of Crespin's work. Both languages converge harmoniously to delve into the relationships that exist between time, movement, and technology.
In addition, Convergences is presented as a disturbance in the evolution of the art of our time. The set of pieces demonstrates that art, as technology, is located between the social and the individual; the local and the global; space and time; the singular and the multiple; the visual and the corporeal, and between the artist and the spectator. The result is a language that moves between technology and fine art, like a glitch in art history.
About Tania Aedo Arankowsky
Cultural producer and curator with a long career in the development of projects in the crossroads of knowledge, especially between art, science and technology. She is currently coordinator of the Max Aub Chair, Transdiscipline in Art and Technology at UNAM. She directed the Laboratorio Arte Alameda and the Multimedia Center of the Centro Nacional de las Artes. She hosts and coordinates the podcast "Prototipos para navegar" at Cultura UNAM.
Currently coordinates the Max Aub Chair, Transdiscipline in Art and Technology at UNAM. She directed the Laboratorio Arte Alameda between 2007 and 2018 and the Multimedia Center of the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico between 2004 and 2007. She completed a Bachelor's Degree in Art Education at the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán, studied the Senior Management Program in Museums (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Museum Leadership Institute and the Getty Leadership Institute). She has received several grants, including a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller-Ford-MacArthur Foundation and a grant for Creative Residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, awarded by FONCA. She has participated in selection committees in the field of art and new media for different institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation, ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Arts). She has carried out several curatorial projects including Surrounded (2009), at the School of Art, Media and Design at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; Arqueología de la autonomía (2018) at Laboratorio Arte Alameda and Fiamma Montezemolo: Soñar con bisontes (2019) Laboratorio Arte Alameda.
About Elias Crespin
His training in engineering and computer science is essential for the development of his work. The encounter with the work of Jesús Rafael Soto led him to discover the potential of abstraction as a form of mathematical representation. His first artwork, “Malla electrocinética I” (2004), is the result of a reflection process on the mathematics of movement. By using motors controlled by custom software, he manages to animate geometric modules whose kinetic metamorphosis alludes to both dance and mathematical analysis.
In 2018, Crespin was commissioned by the Louvre Museum to develop ”L’Onde du Midi” (2020), a large-scale mobile sculpture in which 128 metal cylinders hang from nylon cables connected to programmed engines that generate algorithmically-driven movement. Crespin’s research concerns time, form, and movement, not only as kinetic elements tied to aesthetics, but also as mathematical elements, tied to analysis and programming.
His works have been exhibited in several international solo and group exhibitions, including the International Exhibition in Astana; the XIII Cuenca Biennial; the Busan Biennial in Korea; the Grand Palais; the Maison de l'Amérique Latine; the Musée de la Musique in Paris; the Musee de Louvre; the Fondation Boghossian; the Verrière Hermès in Brussels; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH); and the Ullens center for contemporary art in Beijing. Elias Crespin lives and works in Paris, France.
About Felipe Pantone
He began his practice as a teenager, making graffiti in Torrevieja, in the south of Spain. Calligraphy and typography, the fundamental focus of graffiti, were the platform from which the artist undertook the development of an abstract or geometric visual language that aims to be both accessible and democratic, parallel to current technological speech. Pantone's work maintains a historical connection with current production methods and with the visual references of the hyper-connected and digitized society.
Abstraction is first used as stylistic branding and then poured towards the references of present time full of infographics, statistics, and visual representations of data that synthesize realities into quickly understandable formats. With this, Pantone reflects on the impact of the digital revolution and global communication on the constitution of the contemporary subject. The result is a language that moves between technology and the fine arts, taken to several applications.
Among his most outstanding public installations are the murals commissioned by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France; the mosaic at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain; the murals in two buildings of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico; the mural "Optichromie" at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, USA and the mural "300,000 Km/s" on Faria Lima Avenue in São Paulo, Brazil. Felipe Pantone currently lives in Valencia, Spain.
