Once again I will post without much lyrical explanation, but time is scarce. The flier is, I hope, self explanatory: I am performing with my piece ''Ruedazuela'' in the University of Delaware in the patio of Trabant University Center from 12:30 to 3:30.
Rain date scheduled for Tuesday Nov 17th, same time. Here are links to two local newspapers that have featured the piece in an article: http://eltiempohispano.com/ (last edition, #6)
A few days ago the News Journal wrote an article about a race that I was part of this past weekend. Here´s the link so you can check out what they wrote:
And just today I noticed a lil' vid was also added onto the article, which was posted on the web-page delawaretoday.com (I swear I did not make the image for the video be mine, that's just how it came up, and that's kinda awesome I guess):
It's kind of funny. The narrator explains how in this kinetic race people "decorated their bicycles" and then mine, well, its totally not a bicycle; and he also happens to say the word "bicycle" when my piece and I show up in the video.
PS: I will soon post more information about this piece and the places it has gone...
A scrap piece of wood. A rabbit (or hare?) covered in Wax A scrap piece of metal. An orange line. A tooth. A cardboard house. A worn out photograph. This aspects make up the piece here pictured, CASA/remembering. They make up the material/physical realm of this piece. That would be the most basic and straightforward explanation for it. Now, lets get into concepts. All of these materials were collected randomly. From boxes I have kept full of things around my room, or things that were lying around my studios. At first they were just that, random objects, but after sitting with them, a piece of paper, a pen, and (maybe?) a little rum, they became something else. These objects are mine, I have kept them, I have collected them, and for some odd reason I did not just throw them away. They become a part of me; they represent and portray me, Esteban M. Pilonieta Vera. The way they where arranged is meant to show something very specific (I guess the rum helped). All the objects lay on the legged scrap piece of wood because I present this to you as a theatrical moment, a snap shot of some kind, so it serves as the pedestal for it. Weirdly enough, the rabbit has always been my favorite animal. This small toy was particularly abducted from a museum against its will, a sticker with a price directed a different ritual to take place, but my pocket found a way around it; in order to keep my kleptomaniac obsessions alive. So, my favorite animal, my little problem as a kleptomaniac, and a glob of wax. Wax? Yeah, wax. This I interpret to be like the cloud of things, the weight of the common day life that slows me down, that keeps me contrived here, in Delaware. The tooth is the real me, or at least what at some point I really wanted to go back to being, but then I realized I am good enough as I am. It did at some point form ‘‘me,’’ since it is a molar tooth that was removed from my denture a couple of years back. The cardboard house in which it stands in front of is CASA = home, Venezuela, Mérida, El Valle. The orange line serves as a connecting passage between the ‘‘present me’’, and what I once considered to be the ‘‘real me.’’ It is the voyage I have to take with certain regularity so I do not drive myself insane, because I miss too much. That is the worn out photograph, the worn out memories. At some point it portrayed my best friend, and it was in my wallet, next to other objects (like labels or tickets) that served as a quick escape (a quick fix) back home. Until it was so worn out that her face was entirely removed from the image and transferred onto my wallet’s plastic pocket. The sub-title remembering comes from these ideas, since the ‘‘present me’’ stands in front of the ‘‘real me,’’ reviving old memories. These piece is part of a show, the Miniature / Micro-Monumental, in the Townsend University as of now, and until the beginning of November. After that they will come back to the University of Delaware together with other student’s work from Townsend and displayed here. Hopefully the show will make their way to Asia afterwards, to both Thailand and Japan.
As the title entails, this piece is meant as a three-dimensional dedication to the painter Francis Bacon. One of his crucifixion paintings inspired the figure, as well as the intent of the base from which it hangs. The base is alike to the kneeling bench in catholic churches, both in color and in padding, and at the same time, shape wise, it is like the hook from which poultry hangs. I’ve always found myself extremely interested to Bacon’s commentaries on life. I find him to be a ‘‘true realist’’, in the sense in which he looks at humans as just a beautiful, and at the same time horrendous, compilation of skin and bones, not any different to an animal in status or design. Bacon’s technique might not be realistic, but his ideas are as real as it can get. The decision to use animals (= monkeys, chimpanzees, dead poultry) in his crucifixion scenes just strengthens the idea of no status difference; they are worthy (or condemned) to suffer the same ways we do. As I interpret it, Bacon saw us as exquisite corpses (cadaveres exquisitos), not as in the surrealist collaborative artistic method, but as beautiful and complex moving cadavers who work in surreal ways. These piece is part of a show, the Miniature / Micro-Monumental, in the Townsend University as of now, and until the beginning of November. After that they will come back to the University of Delaware together with other student’s work from Townsend and displayed here. Hopefully the show will make their way to Asia afterwards, to both Thailand and Japan.
These I like to describe as my poem series. Basically the pieces come into existence after I undergo a specific process. This involves me remembering. I remember specific people, places, situations, but mostly people. Friends, family, old lovers, and while I do so a make these intricate porcelain pieces that I believe incarnate them. To be able to instigate my remembrance of them, I set up a situation were I believe to remember them best. This may be by reading old letters or emails, by engaging in conversations with them online, or/and by listening to specific songs. It’s a simple process, they are simple pieces, but it’s a complex subject for me to deal with, and it’s personally important that I do so. It keeps me at balance, and from going insane. The palettes have come to signify something truly important in my work. In some pieces they are the material that already has a weight, a history, which adds a complete different subset to the work. In these pieces the palettes are exactly what they are in normality, a platform for an object to be sent. This way I send off my strapped poems out to the world. They were written, composed, or formed, for someone far away, so it just seems proper that they have the same fate, to travel far away.
These pieces are part of a show, the Miniature / Micro-Monumental, in the Townsend University as of now, and until the beginning of November. After that they will come back to the University of Delaware together with other student’s work from Townsend and displayed here. Hopefully the show will make their way to Asia afterwards, to both Thailand and Japan.
I have an obsession. The obsession of opening drawers, just to see what is inside of them. It’s not important if what’s inside is of my interest. Just the action, the opening of that new drawer. The notion that their interior is an unknown space makes me open drawer after drawer. And even though I do not care for what may be inside them, from time to time I will organize what’s there within them. Sometimes it shows to be helpful, as for when they’re my own kitchen drawers, but mostly it is drawers that I have never seen. When I organize what they are comprised of, I do not know if it will ever be opened again, but at that moment its immediate organization seems essential. That is the system I work as an artist: open a drawer = organize the disaster = learn about the unknown = create = close.
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