COLLECTIVE 32

JORGE LUIS DIÉGUEZ

Collective focus on the artistic process of one emerging artist; we learn about their sculptural practice and how it relates to construction, deconstruction, or both. Questions by Joanna Cresswell.

Tell us about your process. What reference or influence (if any) do you take from other mediums? I started photographing landscapes and buildings/structures feeling inspired by contemplating the immensity and how that moment can transport us to a parallel world. However, slowly I been conducting my work into a physical experience, exploring and experimenting with the behaviours of materials involved in the photograph, the substance and less with the representative photograph, which I don´t discard, but I understand it as an aggregate within my proposals, like a 2D element part of a 3D structure. How the world is presented to us; structures, views, elements, forms and sporadic colour combinations, the layers that together build our view, our memory as inhabitants, the geometrical and consistent shape of techno music, all of these things inspire my work and are an important starting part of my process. I constantly walk and take pictures in order to find inspirations that are not coming from something established or thought-out -an individual object/structure could have been thought, however, when it is added into a context, undoubtedly not. Like trees in the nature, from their 1st moment they are constantly adjusting and adapting, showing us a complex beauty and harmony while they grow. I photograph trees obsessively and keep a detailed archived of them in my installations and sculptures I re used my archived photographs or make new ones, depending where I am taking the project, sometimes even in the same project I reuse many times the same photographs in different ways. I am interested in never discard due the immense possibilities that a single image has. For this installation, I did few models on scale, collages and worked in the darkroom aiming to understand how I can integrate the viewer in the photographic process, always with the idea of dismantling the photographic process and the photograph in behalf of the viewer experience and her/his relation with the work and space where the work will be presented. During the process I explored how the materials behave and evolve by their own nature, gave them independence in order to free them from their symbolism or connotations to also disassociate them from their traditional meaning. My process is slow and observational, I left a specific type of paper folded in a specific way hold by a wire for days and saw how it transform, that freedom suggests different possibilities and perspectives to my work and consecutively to the viewer at the time she/he experiences and explores the work. Architecture has been a prevalent influence in my work approach as performance and music. I try not to look into other photographers work while I do or research mine.

Stability and Constructivity_ View - 01.jpg

Are these pictures concerned with exploring formal and aesthetical interests – studies of form, colour, movement, how things work together? These pictures are an edition of my latest project where I’ve worked with the materiality of the photograph and how the photograph could be used as an object that directs the viewers body position within the space. I understand my practice as an exploration of the pure material substance, its colour and form and the psychology behind our relation to material and form. I think my work could be a formal exploration, as I suggest undefined perspectives of how to explore the work, where the act of seeing become implicit and how the viewer response to the work is affected by her/his body position. I always intent to create a dynamic work and integrate the viewer in the process, suggesting that elements can’t stand on their own and the process of making the work its what brought different element together. Also, my aesthetical interests develop slowly within the process of making my work however they don’t define any formal path.

Are you a photographer or an artist using photography?I think somewhere in the middle, I enjoy massively to use a camera (analogue/film), its mechanism and the possibilities it has as a medium, the physical aspects and undefined results of the photographic process, lighting and composition. I use the camera as a tool that allows me to portrait and understand how the world is presented to us, those aspects trigger many ways where to and how to use photography as an artist. For those reason, I just put myself into an undefined area where to set.

Does your work reflect on the medium of photography or the photographic image? If so, is that intentional? I am in the middle again here, it reflects on the medium of photography -the photograph- as I intent to questions the possibilities of the photograph to become something else without losing its integrity. I find attractive the independence of the photograph while keeping its properties and behaviours. However, I would never discard the idea to transmit something with my photographs even my concerns within photography lately are more physical/material substance orientated, due the important meaning that photographing has in my life as personal thought and way of expression. During the show some visitors used the photograph of my installation as a background to make their family portraits, which fascinated me, they knew something strange was happening with the entire installation, but due its size (3000cm x1800cm) the photograph from the desert caught their attention and transported them into a complete different environment.

Typically, are your works more about construction or deconstruction? The idea of fragmenting the photograph and open the frame were two of the three main aspects where I based my project on. My work definitely is about construction even I reuse elements in different ways I create structures or sculptures.

Are you interested in the notion of your pictures as objects? Do you think about how their physicality may endure as you are photographing them or is that an afterthought? Yes, I think its part of my process and for consequence a constant exploration in my practice, I believe that my work evolve and creates its on dynamism by suggesting variable positions, shapes, sizes, presentations to it. I try not to do fixed structures, for example in this installation I used steal, magnets, plastic hooks, wires in order to have free elements and be able to arrange them in many ways each time I setup my work, so the photograph is always proposed in different ways. Also, the photograph is resting on the structure and changes its configuration during the installation is up, I could say that it is alive and redefine by itself.

Often sculptural photographic works are concerned with elevating banal objects, situations or events to a status of ‘art’ – when does something become art for you? I always intent to propose my work and the elements involved as playful and intrigue, I do not locate them into a process of becoming something or became art or even load them with concepts or parameters, these last are used as tools in order to link ideas and edit my process. The elements that compound my work could start been banal objects within an everyday life and become an important part of the final piece, however, they are not aiming to be raise to an art status. I based my ideas on build something accessible and more palpable to a wider audience, I don’t feel that an element has to become an artistic element to be seen in a particular way, I believe in the independence and character in the most banal object and in the most important object, I enjoy and prioritise their behaviour, their form, their memory and their ability to reconfigure, as I said at the beginning I enjoy the immense possibilities that a single image has, in this case the objects, their meaning can change but, their properties and behaviours are the same and that fascinates me.