FELIPE PANTONE: DIGITAL GLAZE
At Javier López & Fer Frances Gallery (Madrid, Spain), the Argentinean artist Felipe Pantone (Buenos Aires, 1986) presents until April 31st Veladura digital (Digital Glaze). The exhibition, the artist's debut at the Spanish gallery, consists of two artworks made specifically for the space The Playground and a newly conceived work that will be exhibited for the first time.
Situated between kinetic art and op-art, Pantone's work for this exhibition is an exploration of colour and light, the boundaries between the analogue and the digital, and the interaction of the viewer with the artwork.
The three artworks on display in Veladura Digital are Additive Variability and two paintings from his Chromadynamica series. In the first case, Pantone's work is an interactive piece that responds to the viewer's indications. The chromaticism of the oeuvre, based on the RGB colour composition, is defined by the interaction of the spectator who, from his mobile phone, can colour the piece. In this way, the work is a collaborative process between the artist and the viewer (who is no longer a mere observer), whose involvement affects the manifestation of the space.
On the other hand, the two paintings that accompany Additive Variability are conceived under the CMY composition system. Pantone brings into play chance and the application of movement to the colours, producing a dynamic and hypnotic space that inscribes his work in the current of artists such as Julio Le Parc, Victor Vasarely and his son Jean-Pierre Yvaral, Carlos Cruz Diez -whose design work is exhibited at the Museo Reina Sofía- and Jesús Rafael Soto, among others.
In the dialogue established by these three artworks (the interactive piece and the two paintings) one can appreciate the elements that constitute Felipe Pantone's work. His work not only "vindicates" or brings to the contemporary scene certain questions of op-art and kinetic art, but adapts this language to the concerns of contemporaneity: the clash between an analogue tradition that is being hastily displaced by a digital culture; the visual hyper-stimulation and infoxication to which we 21st century societies is exposed; or the fragmentation of symbols. Likewise, his technical production appropriates certain characteristics of popular culture such as design and graffiti to develop a futuristic aesthetic that ultimately attempts to reproduce the virtuality and dynamism of postmodern cities.
About Felipe Pantone
Felipe Pantone studied Fine Arts in Leeds and Valencia. He currently lives and works in Spain. His work is part of multiple public interventions in cities such as Miami, Seoul, New York, Mexico City, London, Oslo, Lisbon, Brussels, Ibiza, Moscow, Bangkok, Osaka, Melbourne, Montreal, etcetera. He has also exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo and the ArtScience Museum in Singapore (2018). He has recently created a mosaic of his series Chromadynamica at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
