Tell us about yourself, how did you become an artist?
I was started working as a tattoo artist to pay me the university where I studied graphic design and then entered an advertising agency as an art and creative director, eight years later I started working independently and looking for a personal process, investigating and experimenting with the painting.
What is your background? and how did it inform the focus of your creative exploration or the medium you're currently working with?
Due to my bases as a graphic designer, my exploration is closer to geometric abstraction and how to understand shapes, proportions, structures and spaces.
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What ideas interested you in the beginning of your practice, which ideas have you continued to explore, and where have they led you?
In my first paintings I mixed figurative and geometric elements because I wanted to unite the drawing with the design. Today I only focus on the geometric, I investigate processes, philosophy, the creation of ancient and modern structures.
Gunta Stölzl, sketch
Who were and are the biggest sources of your inspiration?
My great inspiration is the Bauhaus, mainly the work of Joseph Alberts, Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl and Kazimir Malévich.
Johannes Itten, color sphere
Where do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in my environment, ancestral cultures, architecture and nature.
Bauhaus
Is there are a single work, project, or series that is pivotal in your current trajectory?
I think the Diagrama serie is the most important for now, because I expose the grid and the structure of each geometric shape, mixing numbers and intuition.
How did it begin? and how did it evolve?
As a designer I am interested in showing the grid of the typography, of a logo or the layout of a design and how it is thought. I wanted to reflect this in my paintings so I made the structure evident so that it was a subtle part of the work.
Digital art sketch
What were important lessons in the process that you’ve carried forward with you?
For me the important thing is to learn about history, movements, philosophies and theories to understand art in a universal way, but the essential thing is to know ourselves and our environment, only in this way can make a genuine contribution be made.
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What are you working on now?
At this moment I am working with architects to make a residential building here in Panama. each space will have a different art, thinking in the people.
If you could go back in time to the very beginning of your art practice and give your younger self a single piece of advice what would it be?
Trust yourself and keep working, amazing things will happen.
SKETCH_ARTBUILDING
Painting a big mural
About the Artist
Based in Panamá, Panamá
I am artist and graphic designer from Panama. I have exhibited my work in galleries, fairs and biennials in different countries such as France, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and United States and Panama.
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www.wtges.com
