martin bonadeo | texts | thermosynthesis

CS Have you ever built your own instruments?
MB Yes, in the first shows I participated the art spaces didn’t have slide projectors for my installations, so I decided to make devices to project single slides. This handcrafted projectors weren’t like regular ones, so people watched the device as much as the image it was projecting, -something that never happened with a Kodak projector-. When I noticed this effect I decided to change the projectors color to white and to install them over pedestals -like sculptures, which increased the tension between the technology and the image-. This choice to re-think and modify standard industrial technologies is repeated in each one of my works. I like to use devices in ways that weren’t thought by their designers. For example in Moebius Display –a moebius stripe shaped LED screen-, I had to work with square modules to construct a curve, because a screen is always thought like something flat. In a world in which most of the people doesn’t know the operation of technologies they use everyday, the simple gesture of modifying a machine to make it different from an existing technology becomes an artistic fact.

CS Analyzing your work, I noticed that the light -natural or artificial- is a very important component, almost a key in many of them.
MB The light -and darkness, its opposite- occupies a central place in my work since I began making art –with the slide projector I told you before-. Is something that crosses almost all my works. I love to generate experiences where there is a tension between light and the lack of it.

CS I also encounter special references to plants, landscapes, and nature… I’m thinking for example in your over exposed photographies of leaves and flowers; in the dome’s windows covered by translucent images of landscapes; and in the projections of insects on flower patterned wallpapers. In addition I know you are working in a new project to build a tree with robotic branches that grow and move constantly to produce the same projected shade regardless the time of the day, and even at night with artificial light. Tell me more about these interests.
MB Thousands of years ago occidental religions became monotheists; an only God concentrated the power of the whole pantheon of pagan divinities. This synthesis trimmed an enormous amount of rites and adorations to little and great natural wonders. The sun, for example was venerated traditionally by all archaic cultures and today mysteriously this adoration is lost. We give by fact that each time the sun hides in the west is going to appear the next morning in the east. There aren’t any social tributes or sacrifices to make help this process to continue. Some of my works were thought as little contemporary altars for adoration and understanding of this kind of phenomena.
I believe that it is a distortion to think man as something different from nature; I feel we are other element in a whole system, and we aren’t better nor worse than other phenomena in this planet. There is something in observing the stars and their movements, and the plants and everything that surrounds us, that helps us to understand what is in our being, in an attempt to connect us more. In many of my works I incarnate this will and develop a project from my own point of view.

CS In Thermosynthesis, your installation for the show window of the gallery, you now use the light like caloric power plant to activate the alcohol that contains glass capillaries, thermometers in flower form that redden in the presence of the spectator.
MB The origin of this piece is in my childhood, in my desire to avoid going to school. One day I discovered -or somebody told me and I verified soon- that if I put the bulb of a thermometer near the lamp of my night light, it could raise up to 42 degrees, worrying anyone. This scaling of mercury was very fast and doubly satisfactory: on one hand I was beautiful and on the other implied –with a little help of some acting- not going to school. Today I’m a father and I’m still playing and worrying with thermometers and their measurements.
There’s a great contrast between the cold mathematical quantification of temperature and the warm associations to the red color of the alcohol inside the thermometers. The decision of showing thermometers without their scales modifies their utility. Is aesthetic a utility?
When you invited me to participate in this show window, I found an ideal place for this interactive thermo-sculptures. It is strange to find in Buenos Aires pedestrians stopping to see an art gallery show window and it is not very common to enter to see an art show. The idea of doing something reactive in the street interested to me. Each time somebody is detected by a sensor the circuit is activated. I also chose to concentrate the entire show window in a point –a square- and to maintain it dark until somebody passes and activates the flower. It is very common to walk at night in Buenos Aires and activate this monitor lights placed in many buildings doors. This piece works of a similar way -during the day as well- but it uses the light’s heat transforming it into another thing.

CS What is the motivation behind the site specificity of your projects?
MB I believe that each piece of art works different depending on the context in which is exhibited. Depending on the moment and the place the same work may cause very different readings. Most galleries in an attempt to emulate a scientific laboratory - theoretically neutral- are conceived as white cubes. Most of the times I’m not interested in placing an installation in that asepsis. The more baroque it is the place and the more history it has, the more complex the plot constructed between the work and the space. In the case of the Isidro Miranda Gallery, I encounter the show window as one of the richest spaces. Thermosynthesis is placed to give a plus to people who are walking in the street by engaging a dialog between the gallery and other public -who are not used to interact with art-. Whenever I can, I try to work “outwards” the art spaces, attempting a link to massive public. I feel comfortable proposing speeches and discussions with the problematics hidden in each place. My first installations were thought specifically for different sites of the house where I grew up with my parents and there is something of that process which I repeat whenever they invite me to show. Although there are some pieces that may work in different spaces, the majority of my production is thought for specific moments and places.

CS We may say that Termosíntesis concentrates all your interests: the use of technologies, the experimentation with light, the reference to nature and the site specificity.
MB Yes, after this conversation I can see it concentrates all this interests, but I didn’t thought about that until now. Obviously, there are some obsessions that always appear in different shapes in each installation I produce.

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