Caracaballo, 2015, wax and sugar, 40x33x18cm

Briefly describe the work you do.

In my artistic praxis I serve myself of images and texts by transforming them and taking advantage of their “fragile” digital structure. Let’s say I work with the genotype and phenotype of pictures and texts and with the transformation from one in another. I play with the coding of these visual systems, that we could consider as the “genotypical part” and introduce little mistakes that will influence their appearance.

For me the creation process is a discursive one, where I turn to different sources in order to support my research and create a thesis.

Tell us about your background and how that has had an influence on your work and on you as an artist.

Growing up in Madrid (Spain) with my family and a couple of friends really interested in culture, had a big influence in my future decisions. Weekends were full with cultural activities and seeing my parents with a book in the hand almost every time was doubtless a way to add art and culture in my life as completely normal thing.

The concept of the artist studio has a broad range of meanings in contemporary practice. Artists may spend much of their time in the actual studio, or they may spend very little time in it. Tell us about your individual studio practice and how it differs from or is the same as traditional notions of “being in the studio.”

I try to keep a routine in my studio, planning carefully my time, so I spend there as much time as I can besides my other job. And I say my “other job”, because, despite of being Creation such an abstract concept, I try to give my productive phases an structure, so I can regularly jump into them, and so to say, also push them a little. Maybe one of the things that differs the most from traditional notions of “being in the studio” is that the first thing I do when I arrive is turning my computer on.

detail shot of he sculpture of “Reliquia de las disciplinas geograficas”

What roles do you find yourself playing that you may not have envisioned yourself in when you first started making art?

When I first started making art I was more into traditional sculpture. Now I choose some new media as a way to produce my work I never thought I would use before; maybe also because of the fact that the industry of 3D printing, for example, was not much developed in that period.

When do you find is the best time to make art? Do you set aside a specific time everyday or do you have to work whenever time allows?

As I can not allow myself to be a full time artist for the moment, I need to plan specific days and periods of time I can produce. In fact, this planning is working very good for me, since I get to make the most of my time when I have it.

I like to structure the days like regular workdays, when I arrive at the studio at 10 and leave late in the afternoon.

ode on a grecian urn, 2015, Fotoseries (3), 50x70cm, lambda

How has your work changed in the past five years? How is it the same?

I have been 5 years based as an artist in Germany. That has really influenced me on my praxis, since all this years I have kept making a research based art but also moved towards new media as medium. On a conceptual level, I think I started to occupy myself with themes like speech and language, as I moved in a country were I can not use my mother tongue so often.

How have people such as family, friends, writers, philosophers, other artists or even pop icons had an impact on the work you do?

I don’t usually work with biographical issues in my pieces. I think the impact of friends and family in my work is more a dialectical one. It comes from the discussions I have with them when I am producing a new piece, as advice and exchange for my research that are really important and make me go further.

Have you ever been pulled in the direction of a pursuit other than being an artist? What are your other interests?

Art is not the easiest way to make a living. People that care have always been concerned with this issue and tried to make me think in a more practical way. Somehow they have seen me struggling now for 9 years to get better and settle with my art, so I think they have just given up pulling and start pushing me in this direction. 

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All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.