At the end of 2013,
after working for two or three years...
I had the need for more freedom in my work.
I stopped working with waste materials,
I took a brush and black acrylic paint,
and I started doing some exercises.
I did it out of necessity, as a kind of detox.
This is part of an exhibition of 59 fragments
together with The Green Bag, which I'm going to tell you about.
Here you can see some of the pieces.
Later we will talk about it, and comment on some in detail.
At some point, I asked myself
"Why in cinema and literature
is a piece or an argument sliced and arranged in a different way
which results in a different expression?"
The story is the same, but the expression is different.
And I wanted to test if the same was true for painting.
So, I started cutting.
I started cutting pieces and joining them.
Such as this piece here.
The fragments come from different pieces.
In other pieces, like this one, it's cut and arranged differently.
And the same here.
This piece is made on wooden boards.
Well, I was working with fragments and all of a sudden,
while looking for some material on the shelves of my studio,
I discovered this green bag.
A green bag full of wire.
I started to spread them out on the table,
and when I saw this message, it looked like words in a dictionary.
They were waiting for someone to join them
and to make sense of them.
They are like words or shapes
waiting for someone to do something with them.
These pieces also reminded me of the work of a poet.
A poet does not build or create words,
a poet picks words and joins them to make sense of them.
And this leads to expression.
And that was my intention with these pieces.
They are pieces that were incomplete,
and I didn't want to touch them; I wanted to leave them as they were.
Some pieces are very small, others are large,
some are complex, others are cut...
They are very varied.
I thought about working on each one and turning it into a sculpture.
This is how The Green Bag project was born.
I isolated each one,
analyzed them, studied them.
Apart of the work method that I will discuss later,
I photographed them next to my mobile for size perspective,
and I started to move them
to see what the pieces were trying to tell me.
And this small, insignificant piece
needed to be paired with something much more powerful.
I started to see a crouched human figure
with its arm toward the back that appeared very tense.
So, what I was trying to do
was to augment the powerful tension that the shape had
and to enhance it to the maximum.
So, to do that, I placed it
on a white cement base
and I placed a methacrylate bar on top
which carried all the color,
the force and the black color towards the right.
So, it became unbalanced, and it increased the effort
of holding it in place.
Thus, little by little I completed all of them.
In some cases, they hardly needed anything;
I simply looked for an orientation.
I didn't alter it, I simply looked for meaning in the form
and allowed it to express itself because the form was interesting.
Other forms, like this one, appeared to be asking to be completed
because the shape had been cut.
It's a piece of something and it's missing a part.
So, I joined it between two pieces,
and I used the loop as a kite.
This piece is called Holding my Cloud.
I really like the concept of weight.
It's a game of weight.
The cloud, which is the most colorful, is being held down.
The thread is holding the cloud and making sure it doesn't float away.
Little by little, I completed all the pieces.
In this case, I joined two pieces,
creating a dialogue between the two.
I used this resource a lot;
in this project as well as later on.
This case is similar to the previous one.
I think both pieces are very interesting.
We achieved a union with it,
because both pieces are weightless.
It's a contrast: the unity that the two create
in a parallel position,
but they're also very different. One is geometric.
It has a determined and powerful movement, it's clear and decisive.
It's aggressive, it seems to be attacking,
and the other is much more indecisive, more fearful,
more sensitive and shy.
And the loop at the end makes it almost feminine,
and it always reminds me of two worlds.
The male world and the female world.
The title of the piece is Now You Are Mine.
I think it describes it very well.
Like a male stalking a female.
This piece was very difficult to make.
It had a really complicated shape
and I couldn't quite find the meaning,
what to focus on, and how to create visual interest.
In the end I made this kind of visual helix
that starts from the seaweed hairs
in the center of the image; it starts,
it moves down, the black piece rises,
it leans on the blue and reaches the end.
There is a visual route that I think is very interesting.
And then there is the piece of wood that supports everything.
To me it looks like part of a tree,
like a small bonsai tree
supporting a type of galaxy.
Here, I really like the expression and the contrast...
The dialogue between the two.
Between the base, which is very important and large.
It's a very clean piece, the base is very high,
and on one side it looks like something has exploded internally.
It's coming out of the side at an unexpected place
and it's coming out with tremendous force.
The shape is coming out of the base.
It is supported by the weight created by the red plastic at the end
and this creates even more tension.
And the concept of retreat
which is created by the piece of wood.
This is a very funny piece.
We'll talk about this piece when we look at the visual route,
but I think I achieved the opposite of what has happened in reality,
because the wire had a shape that lifts it up,
a somewhat fanciful shape without meaning.
And suddenly, by simply adding some points along it,
it adds meaning, because it seems like the line
is running through points that appear suspended.
But really, the opposite has happened.
But, visually, it gives you that impression.
And it's pleasant to see how the line goes through the points at random
and how accurate the line is when it crosses the suspended points.
The expression of this piece,
I call it There is Life after Chaos,
because it looks like a very defeated piece,
but it's a defeat with a lot of energy.
The wire is below the line,
from the point of view of the base from which the wires are born.
It is below that level and then rises again.
That resurgence, that twisting,
puts all the weight of the figure to the left
and gives it a very interesting power.
Here you have the whole collection.
There are 26 pieces in total.
I believe that in this sense,
this exercise is an exercise in which
for me, the exercise itself is more interesting
than the completed work.
The finished work is interesting, but how it is done is more interesting.
I think that's very important.
After the experience with sculpture,
I continued working with plastic and I started to work
with other materials in three dimensions,
with pieces that were unrelated to the previous ones,
but they did have the three-dimensional aspect
and I still collected recycled material.
These pieces are two meters long.
They are quite powerful,
and the important thing about the material
is the rhythm of the arrangement.
The essence of the piece lies in the rhythm of the elements.
This is also an exercise in rhythm.
I made it from seaweed that was given to me
by very kind people who think of me when they go to the North Sea,
and they bring me seaweed on the plane.
Very kind people who brought me some beautiful seaweed.
This chaotic piece has incredible movement
created by the contrast of shapes and colors.
It's a crazy dialogue between 500 people who are screaming.
Or this quiet piece and the contrast,
the dialogue between the simple and straight shape
and the other, more elegant shape.
And this explosion of stones; I was working on
suspension and weightlessness.
This brings us to the end of all the projects
that I wanted to show you; this one was the last.
All these images will form an important foundation
for what I will be explaining, and the exercises,
and the lessons that we'll work on later.
I wanted to show you these, because if you understand their context
and why they are made, you will understand their essence.
In the next unit,
we'll talk about the work method.
We'll talk about how to approach
this type of material,
what we have to do, and the changes we have to make,
how to apply the principles of perception
that we need for getting maximum expression out of the material
that is lying on the ground.
And then I'm going to show you
how these principles...
I will show some sources of inspiration that I have had,
some of the inspiration notebooks that I've been collecting of images,
and above all, I'll show you how some artists have used
these principles of perception in a very wise and intelligent way.