https://www.altiba9.com/platfrom-interviews-for-artists/shilowska-pretto-painting-otherworldly-creatures
I posted this painting by Costa Rican artist Shilowska Pretto yesterday and asked people to guess what it was. You might be surprised to learn that it was nothing more and nothing less than oil paint on canvas.
When I first saw Ms Pretto’s work I had no idea what sort of material’s she was using to create it. I thought it might be fibreglass (a few of my surfboard repair jobs looked a bit like that back in the mid-90s) or plastic.
Like a lot of people here, I thought the image was reminiscent of those aerial photographs of a tropical island, where the drifting sand bars smudge under the water and toxic oil spills stands out. I wanted to post the image here without any information, just to see how easily, or not, it might trick the human eye in this format ( the original, large canvas on a gallery wall might be easier to tell).
Ordinarily Trompe-l’œil is an artistic term reserved for the realistic representation of a material object that tricks the eye into believing that the two-dimensional image is actually three dimensional. Here is one famous example, Mantegna’s oculus on the ceiling of the Spouses Chamber, castle of San Giorgio in Italy.
What is impressive about Pretto’s work is that she has managed to create a kind of abstract-expressionist Trompe-l’œil. I can’t think of any other abstract artist who work could elicit so many contrary ideas about what it actually represents: Rothko, Pollock, Newman, Still, none of these artists offer work that plays such tricks on our senses (although, rather oddly, Pollock is perhaps the artist whose work most closely mirrors Pretto’s in terms of process) .
For what it is, Pretto’s paint on canvas shouldn’t look like anything more than paint on a canvas. Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who responded yesterday had a sneaking suspicion that it was a painting, but you had a guess anyway. The thing is, once you allow yourself to assume that it is something else, it’s not difficult at all to start imagining all sorts of possibilities, as yesterday’s experiment showed. If you look more carefully, the area up the top right-hand side of the picture plane has a few hints of brush-strokes, but overall, the image does look remarkably realistic and non-painterly. I think it’s power lies in the fact that it appeals to our imagination through the senses. This frees the imagination far more than if it were appealed to by way of reason
(recognising the formal representations of objects in the world).
I was quite interested in the artistic process, and I wanted to ask Pretto if she had any kind of rough image in her mind of what she wanted to create before or after beginning the work ? Or did the painting actually create itself?
Someone who picked the artist and her work commented yesterday that:
“It’s a painting created by allowing the paint to flow however it wants over the canvas.”
I certainly don’t believe it’s as completely random as that, the artist must make certain choices that affect the creation of the image in terms of colour and form.
In the end I decided not to ask Pretto about the process because it’s nicer to be left with some sense of wonder, like when a magician makes a rabbit disappear from a hat.
Pretto was born in Costa Rica some time before the first Costa Rican astronaut, Franklin Chang, flew into space, although she claims to be something of a space-cadet herself. Before she began painting she worked as a graphic and interior designer, painting enormous murals across the walls and ceilings of Costa Rican villas and institutions. Her artist’s biography states::
The central theme of her work is the liberation of form using natural born patterns, light and reflection. In 2010 she becomes part of the Austrian base, multimedia and artist representation group Butterflies & Bunnyrabbits. The artist´s agenda for 2010 starts with an exhibition at the Artist´s Space of Le Meridien Hotel in Vienna and continues with an European tour including Monte Carlo and Milan.
(text: Aurelia Garrido)
Elsewhere, Pretto has stated:
In this attempt to shape my view of the world I’ve learned that the process of painting is very much like the process of living… you have to approach it with humbleness and try not to get in the way of what is seeking expression through you.
There you go, so maybe the artist does work very much as a conduit between Ideas and Forms ( greater than the sum of her creative parts) and the canvas onto which those Forms take shape.
If you’ve read any art catalogues recently you might have been left with a feeling that literary physics has a new home in the visual arts. It hasn’t, catalogues are often a lot of sound and fury indicating nothing much in the way of great ideas or images. There is a lot of great work out there, and there is a lot of literary pretention and bullshit employed to disguise very average work. What is refreshing about Pretto’s outlook is that it stands in contrast to the kind of verbose, egoistic artist as potent creative force nonsense you get in many contemporary art catalogues. Sometimes when artists offer an exegesis of their work it reads like a psychotically anxious and obtuse rendering of the philosophy of Foucault and Lacan with the imagination of Paris Hilton. A bit of humility in contemporary art (or life) is never a bad thing.
There are thousands of great artists working around the world today and only a few will ever become firmly established with international reputations ( and not always because of the qualitiy of their work). I was advised by my publishers to use twitter earlier this year. I did as I was told, and while I was initially skeptical, I’ve found it a fantastic way to meet artists and writers around the world (as well as a few Splatters). It’s just something you need to keep in its place, but thanks to Twitter I’m meeting the Irish
author Julian Gough in Berlin in April, I’m chatting regularly with American author Elise Blackwell, and I’ll start writing more posts like this one, about artists working around the world whose work I think is outstanding.
On a purely aesthetic and sensory level, if I were offered a dozen Damien Hirst’s or one of Pretto’s works, I know whose original painting I’d be snapping up. Pretto’s work reveals something quite rare: an artist and a painter with an original vision and the talent (and humility) to create images that fully realise those ideas on the canvas.
When I first saw Ms Pretto’s work I had no idea what sort of material’s she was using to create it. I thought it might be fibreglass (a few of my surfboard repair jobs looked a bit like that back in the mid-90s) or plastic.
Like a lot of people here, I thought the image was reminiscent of those aerial photographs of a tropical island, where the drifting sand bars smudge under the water and toxic oil spills stands out. I wanted to post the image here without any information, just to see how easily, or not, it might trick the human eye in this format ( the original, large canvas on a gallery wall might be easier to tell).
Ordinarily Trompe-l’œil is an artistic term reserved for the realistic representation of a material object that tricks the eye into believing that the two-dimensional image is actually three dimensional. Here is one famous example, Mantegna’s oculus on the ceiling of the Spouses Chamber, castle of San Giorgio in Italy.
What is impressive about Pretto’s work is that she has managed to create a kind of abstract-expressionist Trompe-l’œil. I can’t think of any other abstract artist who work could elicit so many contrary ideas about what it actually represents: Rothko, Pollock, Newman, Still, none of these artists offer work that plays such tricks on our senses (although, rather oddly, Pollock is perhaps the artist whose work most closely mirrors Pretto’s in terms of process) .
For what it is, Pretto’s paint on canvas shouldn’t look like anything more than paint on a canvas. Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who responded yesterday had a sneaking suspicion that it was a painting, but you had a guess anyway. The thing is, once you allow yourself to assume that it is something else, it’s not difficult at all to start imagining all sorts of possibilities, as yesterday’s experiment showed. If you look more carefully, the area up the top right-hand side of the picture plane has a few hints of brush-strokes, but overall, the image does look remarkably realistic and non-painterly. I think it’s power lies in the fact that it appeals to our imagination through the senses. This frees the imagination far more than if it were appealed to by way of reason
(recognising the formal representations of objects in the world).
I was quite interested in the artistic process, and I wanted to ask Pretto if she had any kind of rough image in her mind of what she wanted to create before or after beginning the work ? Or did the painting actually create itself?
Someone who picked the artist and her work commented yesterday that:
“It’s a painting created by allowing the paint to flow however it wants over the canvas.”
I certainly don’t believe it’s as completely random as that, the artist must make certain choices that affect the creation of the image in terms of colour and form.
In the end I decided not to ask Pretto about the process because it’s nicer to be left with some sense of wonder, like when a magician makes a rabbit disappear from a hat.
Pretto was born in Costa Rica some time before the first Costa Rican astronaut, Franklin Chang, flew into space, although she claims to be something of a space-cadet herself. Before she began painting she worked as a graphic and interior designer, painting enormous murals across the walls and ceilings of Costa Rican villas and institutions. Her artist’s biography states::
The central theme of her work is the liberation of form using natural born patterns, light and reflection. In 2010 she becomes part of the Austrian base, multimedia and artist representation group Butterflies & Bunnyrabbits. The artist´s agenda for 2010 starts with an exhibition at the Artist´s Space of Le Meridien Hotel in Vienna and continues with an European tour including Monte Carlo and Milan.
(text: Aurelia Garrido)
Elsewhere, Pretto has stated:
In this attempt to shape my view of the world I’ve learned that the process of painting is very much like the process of living… you have to approach it with humbleness and try not to get in the way of what is seeking expression through you.
There you go, so maybe the artist does work very much as a conduit between Ideas and Forms ( greater than the sum of her creative parts) and the canvas onto which those Forms take shape.
If you’ve read any art catalogues recently you might have been left with a feeling that literary physics has a new home in the visual arts. It hasn’t, catalogues are often a lot of sound and fury indicating nothing much in the way of great ideas or images. There is a lot of great work out there, and there is a lot of literary pretention and bullshit employed to disguise very average work. What is refreshing about Pretto’s outlook is that it stands in contrast to the kind of verbose, egoistic artist as potent creative force nonsense you get in many contemporary art catalogues. Sometimes when artists offer an exegesis of their work it reads like a psychotically anxious and obtuse rendering of the philosophy of Foucault and Lacan with the imagination of Paris Hilton. A bit of humility in contemporary art (or life) is never a bad thing.
There are thousands of great artists working around the world today and only a few will ever become firmly established with international reputations ( and not always because of the qualitiy of their work). I was advised by my publishers to use twitter earlier this year. I did as I was told, and while I was initially skeptical, I’ve found it a fantastic way to meet artists and writers around the world (as well as a few Splatters). It’s just something you need to keep in its place, but thanks to Twitter I’m meeting the Irish
author Julian Gough in Berlin in April, I’m chatting regularly with American author Elise Blackwell, and I’ll start writing more posts like this one, about artists working around the world whose work I think is outstanding.
On a purely aesthetic and sensory level, if I were offered a dozen Damien Hirst’s or one of Pretto’s works, I know whose original painting I’d be snapping up. Pretto’s work reveals something quite rare: an artist and a painter with an original vision and the talent (and humility) to create images that fully realise those ideas on the canvas.
In enger Kooperation zwischen dem österreichischenKünstler Franke und der Künstlerin conté mit Unterstutzung des Ministeriums fürKultur und dem österreichischen Konsulat in Costa Rica, und den Pan AromaEvents, der Kunstlerautausch zwischen Costa Rica und Osterreich umgesetztwerden.
Für die Costa Ricanerin ist ihre ersteAusstellung in Europa. Eine weitere soll in Paris folgen. Ihre neustenArbeiten, zeigen abstrakte Materialkompositionen. “ This body of work is theculmination of several years of experimenting with Light, reflection, and theuse of non-traditional materials . This long time quest has being a search for a technique that allowedme to move away from my preconceived ideas in painting, and above all, fulfillmy Desire to liberate form and and take advantage of the magical,transformative qualities of Light”. Ähnlich wie bei vorangegangenen abstrakten Strömungen,man denke an die New York School in den 1950er Jahren, geht es der Künstlerinvorrangig um den Arbeitsprozess selber. Indem sie von der traditionellenMalerei ablasst, entstehen ausdrucksgesteigert Materialassemblagen. Es ist eineorganische, chaotische Kunst, in der die Materialien immer noch zu fliessenscheinen. Die materielle Symbiose zwischen Lacken, Spiegeln und Paillettenfuhrt zum Licht und dessen Reflexion. “ My work is base don exploring the quality of light andreflection. “Das Licht, das in der Kunst das nicht-materielle, dasmeta-physiche darstellt, verweist in Prettos arbeiten auf den mystischenCharakter ihrer Bilder. Es sind Bilder, in denen der Betrachter in AndereWelten Blicken darf. Die grosstenteils monochromen Kompositionen verweisendurch Materialen auf immaterielle Wert im Hintergrund. Es ist eine subjektiveund mystische Kunst im Sinne eines Yves Klein, die Welten und Emotionen zuoffnen Vermag.
Denise Sumi
Für die Costa Ricanerin ist ihre ersteAusstellung in Europa. Eine weitere soll in Paris folgen. Ihre neustenArbeiten, zeigen abstrakte Materialkompositionen. “ This body of work is theculmination of several years of experimenting with Light, reflection, and theuse of non-traditional materials . This long time quest has being a search for a technique that allowedme to move away from my preconceived ideas in painting, and above all, fulfillmy Desire to liberate form and and take advantage of the magical,transformative qualities of Light”. Ähnlich wie bei vorangegangenen abstrakten Strömungen,man denke an die New York School in den 1950er Jahren, geht es der Künstlerinvorrangig um den Arbeitsprozess selber. Indem sie von der traditionellenMalerei ablasst, entstehen ausdrucksgesteigert Materialassemblagen. Es ist eineorganische, chaotische Kunst, in der die Materialien immer noch zu fliessenscheinen. Die materielle Symbiose zwischen Lacken, Spiegeln und Paillettenfuhrt zum Licht und dessen Reflexion. “ My work is base don exploring the quality of light andreflection. “Das Licht, das in der Kunst das nicht-materielle, dasmeta-physiche darstellt, verweist in Prettos arbeiten auf den mystischenCharakter ihrer Bilder. Es sind Bilder, in denen der Betrachter in AndereWelten Blicken darf. Die grosstenteils monochromen Kompositionen verweisendurch Materialen auf immaterielle Wert im Hintergrund. Es ist eine subjektiveund mystische Kunst im Sinne eines Yves Klein, die Welten und Emotionen zuoffnen Vermag.
Denise Sumi
The Luxury of Light: the art of Shilowska Pretto
The clocks have gone back; days are shortening, shadows lengthening depressingly early, as we hurtle towards midwinter. The light is suddenly at a premium: we treasure those fleeting, crisp, golden autumn days; we make our Jack-O’-Lanterns, our bonfires, and fill the sky with fireworks; Diwali begins; lamps are lit, we hunker down and think about that great tangle of Christmas tree twinklers that will soon need unravelling…
At this time of year Shilowska’s shining art is, I find, irresistible.
All painting is essentially about ‘painting’, about what it as a medium can do. In Shilowska’s words:
“…light, reflection…a search for a technique that allowed me to move away from my preconceived ideas in painting, and above all, fulfil my desire to liberate form and take advantage of the magical, transformative qualities of light..”
Composed of mixed media – non-traditional materials such as car paint, sequins, glassy mosaics, as well as oils – on canvas, these pieces really are Light as Object of Desire.br>
The paintings exude for me a gleaming preciousness and glamour, a warm richness that appeals to my shameless wintry desire to indulge myself:“Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté. “*
(From Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au Voyage in Les Fleurs du Mal.)
I love that, the ‘calme’, the tranquil timelessness; the smooth languor of the gently flowing paint which is allowed to go desultorily, lazily, where it will, creating an image of…
Well, what?
Something both macrocosmic and microcosmic; organic patterns reflective of distant galaxies, fathomless oceans, the filigree delicacy of a spider’s web.
Or gorgeous, enchanting magpie dreams.
You choose.
Santa, if you’re listening:
I want.
_________________________________________________________
* “There, everything is but order and beauty, / Luxury, peace and pleasure.”
The clocks have gone back; days are shortening, shadows lengthening depressingly early, as we hurtle towards midwinter. The light is suddenly at a premium: we treasure those fleeting, crisp, golden autumn days; we make our Jack-O’-Lanterns, our bonfires, and fill the sky with fireworks; Diwali begins; lamps are lit, we hunker down and think about that great tangle of Christmas tree twinklers that will soon need unravelling…
At this time of year Shilowska’s shining art is, I find, irresistible.
All painting is essentially about ‘painting’, about what it as a medium can do. In Shilowska’s words:
“…light, reflection…a search for a technique that allowed me to move away from my preconceived ideas in painting, and above all, fulfil my desire to liberate form and take advantage of the magical, transformative qualities of light..”
Composed of mixed media – non-traditional materials such as car paint, sequins, glassy mosaics, as well as oils – on canvas, these pieces really are Light as Object of Desire.br>
The paintings exude for me a gleaming preciousness and glamour, a warm richness that appeals to my shameless wintry desire to indulge myself:“Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté. “*
(From Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au Voyage in Les Fleurs du Mal.)
I love that, the ‘calme’, the tranquil timelessness; the smooth languor of the gently flowing paint which is allowed to go desultorily, lazily, where it will, creating an image of…
Well, what?
Something both macrocosmic and microcosmic; organic patterns reflective of distant galaxies, fathomless oceans, the filigree delicacy of a spider’s web.
Or gorgeous, enchanting magpie dreams.
You choose.
Santa, if you’re listening:
I want.
_________________________________________________________
* “There, everything is but order and beauty, / Luxury, peace and pleasure.”
L’artista,la sua poetica e la mostra dall’Acqua Nasce l’Anima:
L’artistalavora nell’ambito dell’arte astratta con uno stile molto freso e raffinato.
Le opere hanno un aspetto molto acquatico, interessante è la ricerca dei materiali e dei colori dalle tinte metalliche e smaltate.
Questielementi tecnici sono parte di una ricerca più ampia dell’artista sulla luce,le sue simbologie e il modo in cui essa interagisce con lo spettatore.
L’acqua e le forme liquide diventano elementi cardine di questa ricerca: schizzi di vernice si muovono in maniera spontaneamente vitale su dei fondisfumati che creano profondità spaziale e pathos.
Lavita nasce dall’acqua e come l’acqua si manifesta in innumerevoli formedi incredibile bellezza, tuttavia è la luce a dare un senso a questa vita, unadirezione, uno scopo più alto e importante.
ShilowskaPretto, sembra essere alla ricerca dell’origine di questa luce che forse possiamo chiamare anima o spirito, essa è intorno a noi, sopra di noi ma è allostesso tempo anche dentro di noi come una fiamma vitale o un luccichio che tintinna al nostro interno e che è in risonanza con l’universointero.
Questistupendi lavori parlano di trascendente e di una via spirituale che deve esserenaturale e non imposta o regolata da regole ferree, ma ci parla anche di auto-affermazione personale. E’ solo con un contatto più consapevole con laspiritualità e il mondo trascendente che possiamo affermare noi stessi ed essere delle creature migliori, più belle.
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