How do you describe your own art practice?
It is collage in every sense. Juxtaposition not only of mediums (photography, sculpture, video) and materials (anything!) but of ideas too. I normally work with something that it’s not working well in my life, in the world, the system, anywhere and explore critically the event, its causes and consequences. Then I transform my conclusions into sculptural installations. I try to laugh at it, I mean that I try not to be a victim of the chaos but fight it with laugh, I can say things and that is power.
What was your first experience with art?
I’ve been thinking about it and arrived to this memory that I didn’t think of in ages. This happened when I was very young maybe six? My uncle Antonio brought me and my cousin Bruno to his studio that was on the top of a building where his family had an optician shop in my hometown in Andalucía (south of Spain). He was a psychologist and also a painter. Everything was full of canvases, bottles of paint and brushes, but only that, no furniture that I can remember only paint and light. He set up a little corner for us and I did a painting of Peter Pan with blue eyes, my cousin and me were obsessed by him at this point, truly believed that we really met him. I never thought of being an artist as something real people could do, but that was great, the studio, the solitude, the freedom, that was FUN. Probably since then, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up I used to say “a supermarket cashier (because I loved the red light at the conveyor belt) or an artist”.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
Yellow, politics, gaps, what doesn’t work, mistakes, the lack of something, the lack of money, subversion, desire, everyday data and dadá.
What do you need in order to create your work?
Time. Space. Time again. To have fun. And to remember that I make and do not produce.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment I’m in Malta where will be doing an art residency and working on a group show at East Bristol Contemporary that will take place in the middle of April. I’m working in a new project that involves the power of Yellow! It’s the beginning of this and I will be showing the first attempts of the project at the EBC show in Bristol along with other nice artists and it’s exciting.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
I spent an evening with Spanish artist Julian Baron a few weeks ago in London when he came to teach “The cage”, an art workshop to visualize the housing crisis in Bristol. He was telling me about his future plans and the pedagogic part of his most recent work and once again it was very inspiring. He reminds me that not the whole art world is the same. Julian introduced me to the work of Ciara Phillips which I’ve been searching and following since then and very much dig into. I’m also enjoying the work of Beatriz Sanchez a lot, a Spanish artist who works with a variety of mediums (she is using plasticine for video works at the moment and I’m loving it). I find her work very fun and punk, makes me think yesss and long live low cost materials!
