A conversation with Manards about energy, isolation and nature in his artwork.
In your piece “Fragments and Sparks” the only things that seems to be alive are these full color entities. In the middle of this dead forest, they rise energetically. What could you say about this impression?
Due to the ongoing Covid pandemic and other literally burning issues, my creative and mental aspects have suffered from the isolation and the current state of the world. I have not been as productive as I used to be. This work is, in a way, a personal reflection on that state.
You just said a few words that I find interesting: “isolation” and “state of the world”. This desolate forest, as I see it, inserts your work into the contemporary debate of the nature morte environment that surrounds us. “Naturaleza muerta” is the way still life is called in Spanish, and the translation would literally be “dead nature”. Of course, it originally refers to a kind of artistic composition, extremely different from your images: usually a basket of fruit or something similar; but if we read it with a spark of imagination, if we play a little with the sounds and the meanings of these ideas, what comes to your mind when I say “dead nature”?
Good question. I think the landscape itself could be seen as a still life, and vice versa, a still life may be seen as a landscape. Whether I am making a landscape or a still life composition in 3D, in its essence, I’m just placing objects within the frame, so it all can be seen as a still life, or naturaleza muerta, as you say. It’s all very interesting to me, because with my painterly touch, I am trying to invoke this human aspect into the seemingly cold 3D renders, so any 3D render that imitates life could be seen as dead nature. These sparks in the naturaleza muerta could be my literal efforts of showing that human touch on that piece, although at a first glance they seem pretty sci-fi, but then again, they look more real than a 3D generated tree in Houdini.
In “Fragments and Sparks” there’s a frame hanging on a branch. It’s actually a photo of a painting made in oils and pastels. That gesture of material paint exposed in this dystopic forest, what does that mean to you?
For me, it is about playing with mediums, what is the piece, who is the observer, who is the painter? Is it all an imagination, or is it an actual place? It is also a sign that someone is ‘’there’’, or has recently been there in a way. There are elements that seem very realistic, but then again, they are not. I like to be between the borders of photography or rendering and painting. And I want the viewer not to take anything for granted and really look into it.
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