“An Air from the City is a quest of how to raise awareness and treasure nature, how to coexist without destroying it. “Concrete doesn’t give us fresh air”. Conceptually speaking An Air from the City still being developed; I think the impact it generates the experience in the spectator is the final concept: to reach the goal of making them treasure what’s left of nature.”
As part of arte_FITS.FOUNDATION’s artist residency program, Puerto Rican born and based artist, Rodrigo Montenegro, produced Danza del Viento, an artisan sculptural series that aims to explore the revitalization of nature through balance and movement. Throughout the years Montenegro has developed his sculptures with a variety of methods and materials ranging from sand to stone. The mystic element in each piece becomes essential as he sculpts the esoteric messages and figures that ultimately form the artwork. In a more commercial approach, Montenegro has been known for creating stone and sand made furniture and company logos.
In Hole in One Jaime Rodriguez Crespo studies the unnoticed intrusion of human involvement in nature amongst natural objects. Just as a golf course consists of an artificial landscape made up of natural elements, the artist creates a bird’s nest that has obviously succumb to human imposition due to its size and placement as a site-specific sculpture. The similarity that exists between the two eggs and the golf ball also addresses the artificial nature of the landscape: as a synthetic object blends in with organic elements.
Jorge Díaz is a Puerto Rican based artist known for creating distinctive installations of urban objects and sceneries inside closed-controlled spaces. For his participation in Art In Golf Triennial 2015, Díaz created Public Grounds were the concept of time in the urban spaces was questioned by using eroded gravel found in the corners of the streets to create drawings on the sand trap.
Through mosaic patterns, Miruna Dragan’s Fertile Void IX: Infinite Prosperity produces a contradictious parallel form of perspective were the reflection of the mirrors provide an equal opening to two of the farthest points of our existence, up in the sky and into the abyss.The ninth piece in the series Fertile Void, possibly the last, persuaded Dragan to surround its meaning with the mysticism of the number nine.
“In golf, the term “rough” identifies a part of the course where the grass is much more abundant. It also identifies the hardships turtles are going through in this century. The term explains how our modern lifestyle has inflicted severe ecological changes that have affected them as marine specie. The idea of the “tour” is to walk through the holes in the course and find a variety of geometric patterns inspired by the designs and protuberances that turtles have on their shells.”
Alternative Nature was composed of the digital prints of several tropical fruits inside acrylic mirror boxes. These boxes were scattered around an area in the golf course of Dorado Beach allowing the surrounding nature to serve as a canvas. This characteristic allowed for the spectators to act as an element of the installation, thus creating an interrelationship between the artwork and the spectators.
The installation, Unsounded Voices; based on the Japanese syllabary, Katakana; was located in Dorado Beach’s Pterocarpus Forest. The pieces were hanged from the trees at altering heights and planes “with the intention of creating a harmonious composition within the environment”. For the artist, the installation represented a divergence from his usual artwork due to its temporary state as well as the materials used.
High in the dry trunk of several palm trees, Rafael Trelles is able to create beauty from death. Looking pass the aridness of the palm trees, in his sculpture; Rebirth of Dorado’s Palm Trees; the dry wood is represented by rebirth as a metaphor of creation. Trelles’ sculpture involves plastic tubes that were painted with aerosol in colors attractive to the eye with iron rods inside them in order to properly freeze and mimic the movement of the palms and flat forms made of zinc also painted with attractive colored aerosol. Thus, the intention of the sculpture is to resemble a frozen swing in order to delight one in the ephemeral instant of rebirth through art. “[The Rebirth of Dorado’s Palm Trees] summons one to imagine the rebirth of the dead palm trees in order to envisage for an instant, while it is being aesthetically contemplated, the triumphant possibility of art and love beating death”.
Vientre Compartido, the Suarez brothers, represent nature’s cycle of life regeneration in Nicho. The sculptures have an organic configuration, like phallic totems with cavities understood as mouths or vaginas, which reinforce the biological concept of the artists’ proposal: the interest for ecological art and the idea of nourishment. As twin brothers, the Suarez must feel the need to let the world know the importance of an evolutionary ecosystem. Not only did they create housing for animals but also a drawing made of seeds allowing the growth and expansion of their ephemeral art. “By discovering the ability to create with the minimum, one becomes worthy of the uttermost possibilities”.
