UNFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
Q: How do you conceive the relation between consciousness and matter in your work/life? (Gabriel Santamarina, 2014)
A: It's a deep concern of mine to be able to contemplate any manifestation of matter as a limited one by our given senses. Very rarely we are able to experience those in its mere essence and without noise.
Another important factor is time, -and striclty spoken- it results to be impossible to assimilate reality in a real time relation, because there is an organic process involved that makes me severely question everything related to reality as such.
I have seen and experienced trough my artistic work (and therefore in my life) that I am able to reduce this noise in order to achieve introspection that intensifies the relation between consciousness and matter.
My pieces are probably small mental exercises packed into aestetic or even playful experiences that do not aim for an educational essence but in it's best case scenario somehow shift ones perception about our individual and collective existence.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
This image is a partial screenshot from my Google Browser. No copyright infringment intended, click image for details.
The following (frequent) questions are reflecting what people ask most via Google, beginning with:
"why is art ___________?". The gap represents what is asked most in english.
Q: Why is art important (to society)?
A: Good artwork instantly communicates with spectators wether on an aestetic level, by concept or by interactivity.
These connections expand socially driven boundaries and limits, which I translate into the most direct way of evolution.
In conclusion: I consider art to be very important because it helps us as a society to evolve more efficently.
Q: Why is art education important?
A: Few governments consider art NOT to be important.
The countries neglecting art in education and the reasons for it are very easy to spot.
I never went to art school, but I am convinced that being informed about art helps people to make better decicions in life. For a starter you get to know yourself and your tastes.
Q: Why is art so expensive?
A: Never confuse expensive art to be automatically good.
It's just a mirror for an artists (and gallerists) ability to move succesfully in a market that is very money driven and utterly hermetic (way less than 2% of US population are artists and around 1% of them are represented by a gallery*).
Or let's put it the other way around: Affordable art is not necessarily bad, but sometimes it tends to be.
What art buyers must consider is the long way it takes for an artist to establish his/her work. Failure and unsuitable work are as much part of the game as are masterpieces.
I like a lot an artist friends point of view who sometimes offers his pieces for free, but not without written explanation by the individual, museum or collection, who tries to purchase it. As a consequence art production is made with a whole different approach to life and is beneficially reduced to a basic human need.
As long as I can keep up my quality work as an artist and sustain my family by doing so, money is a detail that owns very little space in my heart.
* taken from:
https://www.princeton.edu/culturalpolicy/quickfacts/artists/artistemploy.html