Texts, Interviews, Press Links & Resources
Spaceflight and the Art of Vargas-Suarez Universal, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
Creative Bishkek interview with Vargas-Suarez Universal (April 2019) by Benedict Etz
Central Asia Forum, University of Warwick, UK
Celestial Vectors: Earth Meets Sky by Carla Stellweg (February 2019)
Artefuse interview with Vargas-Suarez Universal & art historian Carla Stellweg by Jamie Martinez (May 2019)
Vargas-Suarez Universal: Ancient Vibrations in the Cosmos
by Carlos Palacios (January 2015) Text for Interkosmos exhibition at EDS Galeria, Mexico DF (February 2015)
Beyond Function and Form: The Art of Rendering the Invisible Visible
by Carla Stellweg (April 2014) Text for "COSMOS Codex" exhibition, MACLA, San Jose, CA. (April 2014)
Online article by Esperanza Leon. Published March 29, 2014
Artpulse- interview by Paco Barragan, Winter 2013/2014
Artforum January 2005
Art Review Issue: Jan 2008
Miami Herald, The (Miami, FL)
May 14, 2006
Section: SECTION: Gallery
Edition: EDITION: Final
Page: PAGE: 8D
Memo: ARTS AND LETTERS
Vargas-Suarez Universal: A NEW KIND OF ART
SOURCE / CREDIT LINE: ADRIANA HERRERA T., El Nuevo Herald
The exhibition A New Kind of Science, Vargas-Suarez Universal at the Karpio + Facchini Gallery displays a streak of contemporary art that approaches the vision of the writer Hermann Hesse, who unified music and mathematics in The Glass Bead Game, or the philosopher Ernst Cassirer waiting for the moment when man could understand the universe by a single symbolic system. Similarly, the work is positioned in an area of the vast horizon imagined by Marcel Duchamp. This American artist who was born in Mexico, but lived as a child in Texas, is interested in areas of intersection. He is a kind of explorer who ventures into various sciences, from biology to astronomy and mathematics, to extracting technical data that becomes visual aesthetic material as art, and is no stranger to social reflection. "One hundred years ago" the artist emphasizes "the Cubists were intrigued by the advances in physics and mathematics. Today some artists look at the forefront of science.'' Thus, his works may include architectural references, scientific data of water flows on Mars or instruments that detect this information, and various levels of political allusions merging in disquieting installations. One of the works in the exhibition, Event Horizon, is an oil painting executed on an old enameled satellite system for television antennas. "I see", he says, "the earth's atmosphere, outer space, cyberspace and aerospace architecture as a viable means for art with aesthetic qualities.'' Vargas-Suarez moved his home from New York to Miami for two months, to create A New Kind of Science in one gallery space. Gallerist Silvana Facchini did not mind that he appropriated an antique tapestry made by craftsmen from four centuries ago, to draw and intervene with oil paint shapes and signs that have the quality of graphic diagrams and somehow represent different layers of the human mind . "Now it's worth much more than before,'' She says. Indeed, in Virus Americanus XV, not only shows how artistic creation dissolves the walls that separate one from another time or another area of knowledge, but also demonstrates how Vargas-Suarez's, whose first exhibition in Miami, genesis may interweave information codes, with modern diagram of a microchip and memory of the devastation created by the wars. His motivation for transforming technical modes of visual representation into abstract paintings, manages to do so without thereby forms become devoid of meaning. "Far from losing its meaning, the forms are inserted in an system open to interpretation, appreciation .... or rejection" he says. The huge painting Birkéneau practically occupies one wall of the gallery, merges two planes, two scales, one abstract work inspired by the way human memory figures life experiences and can store images of the dark or the structures of the universe that science is discovering. The basic structure of the composition is taken from an aerial map of the infamous Nazi camp Birkenau. Shapes from train routes appear where trains of prisoners were interned for extermination. That visual record, this memory overhead, refers to the invisible memory of those who kept the horror in his brain. Simultaneously, Vargas-Suarez juxtaposes ample strokes taken from the electronic design diagrams of microchips designed to store huge amounts of information. Thus this architecture of extermination blends with the design of computer systems in one modular assembly of oil paint on wood. This organic material on which artificial intelligence is developed by man, somehow related to the people who once filled those fields with a living memory of hell can also create human intelligence. The geometric painting Tree of life draws its forms from "one of the most bizarre frontiers of mathematics'' presents a mathematics problem fairly well known as the Tree of Life. "The composition is based on the geometric visualization methodology from a branch of mathematics called Cellular Automata.'' Based on the principle that simple rules can yield complex results and research how systems spontaneously and mathematically organize themselves to establish what kind of logic nature uses in evolving biological systems. Vargas-Suarez mathematically divides the background then begins to draw lines following a numerical diagram, he then cuts the image into modules and only later when they initially seem to make the composition unpredictable, they are all reorganized by integrating the composition with the grain of the wood, and then interwoven lines, forms filled with paint as if it obeyed the natural principle of uncontrolled growth. "I think we still know very little about art, art needs more science to advance,'' he says. The realization that weaves "lines'' made him turn to the XVIII century tapestry, especially because it was produced by a Jacquard loom that later gave rise to the first computers. His system used primitive binary signals (hole-no shaft) to mark the spot where it was inserted or not thread. "I was excited to return to the roots of the computer and intervene with painting the tapestry of the geometry of a microchip,'' he says. The title, Virus Americanus XV, not naive: continues the series that began from a photograph of a virus found only in North America and referred to both technological power, and the nature of viruses that which since the beginning of time have proved resilient and able to destroy other biological systems. The technological dominance associated with the ability of devastation in war material also becomes art. For a similar reason, on the opposite wall, the viewer observes an installation that includes prints by members of the court of Napoleon, which together with the desire to expand the empire had also created ideas of exploration and mapping. His idea included the control domain of politics and knowledge. Vargas-Suarez Universal uses those old prints with contemporary technological information as "powerful tools to participate as an artist in a reflection that is projected to society.'' Last year the artist presented a one-person exhibition at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City titled, "to the wall: Space Station Tenochtitlan". His work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art [email protected] `A New Kind of Science '. Vargas-Suarez Universal, Karpio + Facchini Gallery, 1929 NW 1st Ave, Miami. Until 24 August. (305) 576-4454.
Illustration: ILLUSTRATION: photo color: Americanus XV `Virus' (n)` A New Kind of Science '(a)' Tree of Life '(a) `Birkéneau' (a)
Copyright (c) 2006 The Miami Herald
May 14, 2006
Section: SECTION: Gallery
Edition: EDITION: Final
Page: PAGE: 8D
Memo: ARTS AND LETTERS
Vargas-Suarez Universal: A NEW KIND OF ART
SOURCE / CREDIT LINE: ADRIANA HERRERA T., El Nuevo Herald
The exhibition A New Kind of Science, Vargas-Suarez Universal at the Karpio + Facchini Gallery displays a streak of contemporary art that approaches the vision of the writer Hermann Hesse, who unified music and mathematics in The Glass Bead Game, or the philosopher Ernst Cassirer waiting for the moment when man could understand the universe by a single symbolic system. Similarly, the work is positioned in an area of the vast horizon imagined by Marcel Duchamp. This American artist who was born in Mexico, but lived as a child in Texas, is interested in areas of intersection. He is a kind of explorer who ventures into various sciences, from biology to astronomy and mathematics, to extracting technical data that becomes visual aesthetic material as art, and is no stranger to social reflection. "One hundred years ago" the artist emphasizes "the Cubists were intrigued by the advances in physics and mathematics. Today some artists look at the forefront of science.'' Thus, his works may include architectural references, scientific data of water flows on Mars or instruments that detect this information, and various levels of political allusions merging in disquieting installations. One of the works in the exhibition, Event Horizon, is an oil painting executed on an old enameled satellite system for television antennas. "I see", he says, "the earth's atmosphere, outer space, cyberspace and aerospace architecture as a viable means for art with aesthetic qualities.'' Vargas-Suarez moved his home from New York to Miami for two months, to create A New Kind of Science in one gallery space. Gallerist Silvana Facchini did not mind that he appropriated an antique tapestry made by craftsmen from four centuries ago, to draw and intervene with oil paint shapes and signs that have the quality of graphic diagrams and somehow represent different layers of the human mind . "Now it's worth much more than before,'' She says. Indeed, in Virus Americanus XV, not only shows how artistic creation dissolves the walls that separate one from another time or another area of knowledge, but also demonstrates how Vargas-Suarez's, whose first exhibition in Miami, genesis may interweave information codes, with modern diagram of a microchip and memory of the devastation created by the wars. His motivation for transforming technical modes of visual representation into abstract paintings, manages to do so without thereby forms become devoid of meaning. "Far from losing its meaning, the forms are inserted in an system open to interpretation, appreciation .... or rejection" he says. The huge painting Birkéneau practically occupies one wall of the gallery, merges two planes, two scales, one abstract work inspired by the way human memory figures life experiences and can store images of the dark or the structures of the universe that science is discovering. The basic structure of the composition is taken from an aerial map of the infamous Nazi camp Birkenau. Shapes from train routes appear where trains of prisoners were interned for extermination. That visual record, this memory overhead, refers to the invisible memory of those who kept the horror in his brain. Simultaneously, Vargas-Suarez juxtaposes ample strokes taken from the electronic design diagrams of microchips designed to store huge amounts of information. Thus this architecture of extermination blends with the design of computer systems in one modular assembly of oil paint on wood. This organic material on which artificial intelligence is developed by man, somehow related to the people who once filled those fields with a living memory of hell can also create human intelligence. The geometric painting Tree of life draws its forms from "one of the most bizarre frontiers of mathematics'' presents a mathematics problem fairly well known as the Tree of Life. "The composition is based on the geometric visualization methodology from a branch of mathematics called Cellular Automata.'' Based on the principle that simple rules can yield complex results and research how systems spontaneously and mathematically organize themselves to establish what kind of logic nature uses in evolving biological systems. Vargas-Suarez mathematically divides the background then begins to draw lines following a numerical diagram, he then cuts the image into modules and only later when they initially seem to make the composition unpredictable, they are all reorganized by integrating the composition with the grain of the wood, and then interwoven lines, forms filled with paint as if it obeyed the natural principle of uncontrolled growth. "I think we still know very little about art, art needs more science to advance,'' he says. The realization that weaves "lines'' made him turn to the XVIII century tapestry, especially because it was produced by a Jacquard loom that later gave rise to the first computers. His system used primitive binary signals (hole-no shaft) to mark the spot where it was inserted or not thread. "I was excited to return to the roots of the computer and intervene with painting the tapestry of the geometry of a microchip,'' he says. The title, Virus Americanus XV, not naive: continues the series that began from a photograph of a virus found only in North America and referred to both technological power, and the nature of viruses that which since the beginning of time have proved resilient and able to destroy other biological systems. The technological dominance associated with the ability of devastation in war material also becomes art. For a similar reason, on the opposite wall, the viewer observes an installation that includes prints by members of the court of Napoleon, which together with the desire to expand the empire had also created ideas of exploration and mapping. His idea included the control domain of politics and knowledge. Vargas-Suarez Universal uses those old prints with contemporary technological information as "powerful tools to participate as an artist in a reflection that is projected to society.'' Last year the artist presented a one-person exhibition at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City titled, "to the wall: Space Station Tenochtitlan". His work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art [email protected] `A New Kind of Science '. Vargas-Suarez Universal, Karpio + Facchini Gallery, 1929 NW 1st Ave, Miami. Until 24 August. (305) 576-4454.
Illustration: ILLUSTRATION: photo color: Americanus XV `Virus' (n)` A New Kind of Science '(a)' Tree of Life '(a) `Birkéneau' (a)
Copyright (c) 2006 The Miami Herald
Papel Literario, El Nacional June 23, 2012
SBA Report 2012
Proceso 2010
ARCO 2003
New York Artworld 2002