_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

Interview: Angel Baltasar

Luca Curci talks with Angel Baltasar during VISIONS – The Garden of Liquid Identities in Venice.
Angel Baltasar was born in Madrid (Spain) in 1955. Between 1975 and 1980 he studied Fine Arts in Madrid and he soon develops interest for abstract art. He had one pf his first exhibitions with Juana Mordò y artists del informalismo. After a change towards figuration, he adops the stage name Ángel Baltasar in 1984. The exhibitions A Tierno, and Azar Rojo define his love for polyptychs, other non-conventional forms and an interest in video there after portraits and deconstructions complete his style until 2000. Meanwhile he continues to have exhibitions in, Spain, Germany y France. This decade saw Orígenes, itinerant exhibition organised around Spain. In San Esteban, Murcia 1998, he exhibits Azar Rojo on a vertical tableau, as it was in its original concept. Then he created “La Torre de la Igualdad“, a slow performance that combines computer technology, social media, painting and video in memory of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This project was succesfully displayed in 2015 at CentroCentro Palacio de Cibeles in Madrid. He went back to his old artowrk “a un Alcalde Tierno” converting it in two separate works: “Slow Fugaz“, a 3D animation which shows the piece from the viewpoint of a train window, and and “El Éxodo de la Ternura“, infograph of a multitude which, after this computer recreation is no longer seen as an anonymus and is the portrait of humanity exiled.

 

_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

 

Luca Curci – What is your experience? What is the experience that has most influenced your work?

Angel Baltasar – There are always two constant concerns in my work, on the one hand a deep interest in the art of all times, and on the other a permanent attention for the art and the events of my time. From both concerns I extract the motivation that animates my works. Painting, drawing, concept, video and poetry. I could not say exactly, perhaps an irrepressible need to star in my life and express myself with my own language.

 

L.C. – How do you find creative inspiration?

A.B. – I am constantly active and thoughtful. I always follow Picasso’s advice, – If the inspiration comes, I’ll find you working.

 

_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

 

L.C. – What is the most difficult part of creating your works of art?

A.B. – Find an ending that closes the work maintaining the tension of the entire creative process.

 

L.C. – Did you make a style of change over the years? How?

A.B. – Perhaps the most important and decisive change was at the beginning, a jump from abstraction to figuration. As a drastic solution to an identity crisis.

 

_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

 

L.C. – What are you currently working on?

A.B. – I currently work on three works, a figurative painting that inaugurates a new process that I call post-construction, a video poem based on the 3D animation of an old painting, and an intervention in the public space that I call The Martyrdom of Idiots and is a critique of the rise of censorship in art in museums and social networks.

 

L.C. – What is the artistic advice you usually receive? Do visitors’ suggestions enrich themselves and their art?

A.B. – Follow your road – Logically, a large state of attention requires to be receptive, it enriches, but fundamentally I follow my instinct.

 

_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

 

L.C. – What is it like to be an artist today?

A.B. – I think there are so many ways of expressing oneself today that in it lies the virtue and the difficulty of being a current artist. Essentially I think it is not easy, not only because of the enormous competitiveness that exists, also in this world, but because the reduction of the value of art to a purely commercial role complicates certain aspects that are essential to an authentic creative attitude. But it has always been this way, obviously nowadays more notorious due to the magnitude of the artistic event and globalization.

 

_{Image courtesy of Angel Baltasar}

 

L.C. – What do you think about the concept of this festival? In what way did it inspire you?

A.B. – To investigate our identity as human beings is a proposal that coincides with one of my concerns as a citizen and as an artist. The festival inspired me the choice of the play Ifé la noche, for gathering that picture an ethnic, racial and sexual identity that seemed appropriate to the postulates of the event, as well as the video piece Azar Rojo that shows a multiplicity of identities in a polyptych of 500 pieces.

 

L.C. – Do you think that ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?

A.B. – I believe that any platform that offers the possibility of giving vision to the work that we do represents an opportunity, especially if the selection that does obeys good professional criteria. This is the case of ITSLIQUID GROUP.

 

more. www.angelbaltasar.com