Francesc Burgos’ newest show opened this week at the gallery.  Each of us at WSG gallery has the opportunity to have a solo show about every 2 years.  It’s always interesting to see the physical record of an artist’s time.  Burgos’ work is elegant and thoughtful, with lovely craftsmanship.  I asked him a few questions about his process, ideas and intent.  The interview follows:  

Q.  Your background as an architect certainly builds upon a great skill of communicating spatial ideas through 2-D drawings.  I think, often, art appreciators forget that 3-D artists possess those drawing/communication skills.  You have ventured into creating 2-D work to show alongside your sculptural work in this show.  Please tell me a little bit about this development.

 

A.  Most of my artistic work and my artistic education, since childhood, has been in 3d: ceramic sculpture, architecture, mask making, jewelry, product design… and it’s representation in 2d: sketching, drafting… I have been sketching regularly, if not daily, as far back as I can remember and consider myself fluent in rendering 3d ideas in 2d. 

I have been teaching myself to paint with a tablet, first by imitating earlier pioneers of the medium, and lately by reinterpreting in my own way color images that I find attractive, or challenging.  The software that I use, Procreate, has its own possibilities and limitations, and I am slowly discovering them and learning to exploit the first and circumvent the second.  This current 2d work is still, very much, exploratory.

 

Q.  Continuing with thinking about the 2-D pieces…the surfaces of the pieces, even though they are matte finishes on paper, come to have an airy, spatial feel….and by that, I mean, they seem to be a vapor that the viewer could almost enter.  Do you feel that your 3-D work has informed this new 2-D work, and, if so, could you expand on that?

 

A:  I am glad to read that these works have for you “a spatial, airy feeling… a vapor that the viewer could almost enter”, as you write.  Building up a digital painting on the tablet with multiple separate layers of color seems, to me, to create an illusion of depth. If you perceived that as well then, perhaps, it is not my personal illusion but one that can be shared with the viewer. Good news.

 

Q.  When I look at your clay sculptures, I could easily see the forms as monumental sculptures – think Richard Serra, but with more airflow!  These pieces would translate beautifully to pieces in steel, aluminum, bronze.  Have you ever made large-scale pieces like that?

 

A.  My sculptural work in ceramics is informed by many personal interests, from geometry to music (which are related), and prominent among them is architecture, architecture as a humanist endeavor.  Architecture not only creates or envisions objects, buildings, but also, and equally, defines the space between buildings, the public space, while giving form to the interior spaces that we inhabit; the whole spectrum of it constituting what has been called the poetics of space, a fluid continuum that defines our being in the physical world. Often, while working out the details of a particular sculpture I will imagine myself occupying its interior, like a pea inside its pod, or a bird in its nest, enveloped by the tree… Surely this imagination results in some forms having a “monumental” feel about them, and sometimes I do see my sculptures as maquettes or models of much larger works. Alas, perhaps one day…