PABLO TAMAYO
ARTIST STATEMENT
Since the early 2000s I have been working on portraits, in terms of technique my work has used a combination of technology (computers, computer numerically controlled routers, laser cutters, vinyl cutting plotters and video) and laborious traditional art techniques, like painting, collage, silk screen, printmaking and drawing. Tradition in art has played an important role in my work, I have favored the retrospective theory that states that if an artist has a clear view and understanding of the past (tradition) in art he or she will have a more defined and clear path in front of him or her. I have been obsessed with the idea of appropriating values of tradition and traditional art and presenting them in a contemporary way with a valid contemporary language. By contemporary I mean that my work should reflect present time values and have present time characteristics not only conceptually but technically as well.
The processes are so complex I like to document them using video. I edit short condensed versions in loop form which I then present to the viewer so that he or she has a greater connection to the process, the work and the artist.
In 2001 I started mixing oil based enamel into 100 shades of gray, starting with pure white and ending with pure black and all 98 shades of gray between them. Using a combination of computer numerically controlled machinery and traditional hand painted processes I painstakingly and meticulously create photographic quality portraits. I explore different ways of executing portraits in small, medium and large formats ranging from hand painted oil color to laser perforated stretched canvases. Conceptually my work has evolved from the creation of portraits of individuals to the creation of collective portraits. By collective portraits I mean choosing a group of people with some common interest or goal, taking individual photographic images of the members of this group which I then use to fuse and combine proportionally into one image. This final, collective image is everyone in the group and no one at the same time. Due to the nature of the process used to fuse the individual images, the features of the sitters are combined so that they are not recognizable, this makes the final image a portrait of an individual that does not exist.
My intention is to explore one of the most important aspects of portraiture which is not only to create an accurate representation of the sitter, but to explore and show the character and essence of the sitter. For me a portrait must explore the movements of the soul, meaning to explore and make the psychological aspects visible beyond the external appearance of the sitter. In the case of the collective portrait, to explore the essence and character of a group of people that share a common interest or goal.
I am working on several bodies of work concurrently, two of these bodies of work are:
“Art Crowd, Miami” a series of 10 portraits of prominent and influential people involved in the art scene in the city of Miami. These portraits where fused into one to create a collective portrait of this specific group of people. Individual small format portraits of the sitters have been made perforating white stretched canvases using a laser cutting machine to reveal the image. The collective portrait was created cutting individual medium format sections using black construction paper which would then be adhered to a wall and would reveal a very large format image of the collective portrait. A video was also produced to complement the project by animating the morphing process of the image, initially the collective portrait would begin to change very smoothly into one of the sitters, which would then change into another sitter until the last sitter would merge back into the collective image. Video in this case was used not only to complement the process and give the viewer a sense of how the images where combined but also to take the portrait from its traditional 2d or 3d static presentation into the fourth dimension, time. It’s a portrait presented and animated in time that can’t be perceived instantaneously.
“Colombia Presidents” This body of work is being made with the 6 live presidents of Colombia. It will be a collective portrait in which I will merge the individual portraits into one final portrait. This final image will be hand painted onto a large format canvas using oil based enamel. I will recreate loosely the mosaic technique with paint. I plan to use or recreate mosaic because of what mosaic means by definition, the combination of elements of different origin to form a cohesive unity. I plan to use a technique that not only comes from tradition and that can be related to almost every culture in the world in each period in time but also that reflects the conceptual part of the project, the concept of collective. A video will also be made with very similar characteristics to the video created for the Art Crowd, Miami project with the same objectives. This project is being presented to the Salon Regional de Artistas 2007 Zona Centro in Bogota, Colombia.