Estrategias Generativas - exhibition of generative art
Paul Prudence, Marius Watz
14 Oct - 16 Nov, Circulo Bellas Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
Estrategias Generativas exhibition. Works by Paul Prudence.
trategias Generativas is a show on generative art currently running at the Circulo Bellas Artes in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Curator Miriam Durango, who runs the Circulo, invited Paul Prudence (dataisnature / Transphormetic) and yours truly to the ever-warm islands to present generative visual abstractions to an audience that has had little exposure to this kind of work.
Featuring 6 larger-than-human size projections in the classic museum space of the Circulo, the show ended up being a very saturated showcase for generative art. Paul’s angular Klex and Struktr pieces proved an interesting counterpoint to the rounded shapes of my System_C and Neon Organic. We both work with intense colors, so the rooms became bright spaces of movement, light and color.
So far, the response to the show has been very positive, even though this exhibition is unusual for the Circulo. They put together 10-12 shows a year, with most of the work shown being painting or photography. In addition to being a curator, Miriam Durango is a video artist who works with digital media, and so she is trying to educate the local audience. She has previously shown installations by Ulf Langheinrich. There is a strong electronic music culture on Tenerife (with festivals like Eolica and Magma Meeting), so there is a certain resonance with this scene. Still, diverging from the standard work in this way is risky for any art institution, and Miriam is to be commended for daring to put together a show of relatively unknown art by two foreign artists.
With the dataisnature and Generator.x blogs being kindred spirits, we spent a lot of time talking about generative art, the current state of the scene and the nature of blogs. Don’t be surprised if a collaboration appears somewhere in the future. It turns out that Paul has a background in textile design, which goes some way to explain his approach to generative art on his blog. Although he VJ’s regularly, this is one of the first museum shows he has done with this kind of work.
Estrategias Generativas will travel to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after 16 November. The exhibition is supported by the Canary Islands government. In case you don’t know where the Canary Islands is, it’s west off the coast of Africa. See Google Local for reference, the island in the middle of the page you come to is Tenerife.
