Felipe Pantone: Transformable Systems

Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to announce Felipe Pantone’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery, Transformable Systems. Presenting work from both new and ongoing series, this exhibition showcases Pantone’s futuristic style characterized by bright gradients of color and optical patterns. Transformable Systems opens on September 6 and will run through to October 13, 2018.

Felipe Pantone, an Argentina-born artist, exploits an ultra-modern aesthetic as a way to “evoke a digital experience through inanimate objects” and integrates technology into the realm of fine art. As a “child of the internet era,” Pantone’s work revolves around transformation, dynamism, and impermanence. Each of the works in Transformable Systems partially employs mechanical-based processes as a means to investigate digital culture’s transient and pervasive nature, while also rendering it accessible and engaging.

Pantone’s abstract compositions often feature enlarged pixels, QR codes, and grids, exposing the digital mechanisms of production. His work re-examines our digital age and the ways we understand visual information. Reducing his subject to the basic building blocks of image creation allows the artist to call attention to the structure of digital imagery, while finding ways to stand out in our over-digitized world. The artist creates dynamic movement by manipulating color across the x-y plane in the Chromadynamica series. A temporary layer of acrylic installed in front of the painting blurs the bright and colorful pixels, transforming the original work into something new. Works in the Subtractive Variability series have similar registers of color, however, this group is produced with mechanical intervention. Pantone applies cyan, magenta, and yellow UV inks directly onto an aluminum panel using an industrial printer. By moving the panel during the printing process, the artist gains some control over the random interaction between colors. The Optichromie series combines both mechanical and non-mechanical modes of production to explore the visual mechanics of televisions, smartphones, and computers. The gradients and psychedelic accents that characterize these three separate but related bodies of work attempt to capture the dynamism and speed distinctive of 21st Century digital media.

In his practice, Pantone aims to create art that reflects the way we consume information. Traditionally, visual technologies operate as closed systems, transmitting one-way visual and auditory signals, whereas, Pantone encourages open systems for viewer interactions. Viewers can physically engage with Subtractive Variability Manipulable and Subtractive Variability Circular 2, changing their infinite color dynamics. In this sense, Pantone adds a personable side to technology, a place often described as alienating and cold.

Pantone’s electric style fuses Kinetic Art’s real and/or apparent motion with Op Art’s jarring optical illusions. Some of Pantone’s inspirations include artists Jesús Rafael Soto and Victor Vasarely. He is especially influenced by Venezuelan artist, Carlos Cruz-Diez, whose color and line investigates a participatory visual experience. Planned Iridescence CNFG applies Cruz-Diez’s moiré effect that produces the sensation of vibration as the viewer’s position changes in relation to the painting. Pantone compares this effect to digital experience, stating, “Movement is activated by the viewer’s position in front of the work creating an individual experience that I perceive as cyber encounters.”

Technology plays a vital role in Pantone’s process. It is a tool analogous to a paintbrush or a pencil. Pantone asserts, “There’s always a bit of hand manipulation involved in every technology: to paint with a pencil, or ultimately to press the button of a UV printer, for instance.” Technology is not devoid of human interaction. Until systems are fully automated, the human hand will be required to code, program, build, and operate the technologies that impact our daily lives. Pantone’s work urges us to consider the relationship between artistic production and technology, drawing on our concerns of the digital age and the speed at which technology is developing.

Felipe Pantone was born in Argentina. He studied fine art in Valencia, Spain and gained an international reputation under the name of Pantone. His vibrant work is visible around the world in Mexico City, Osaka, Lisbon, Moscow, Palestine, Italy, Australia, and United States. His murals have been commissioned by: Facebook HQ, Menlo Park, CA; Citadium, Paris, France; Skullerud Train Station, Oslo, Norway; Palibex HQ, Madrid, Spain; Hard Rock Stadium, Miami, FL; and Palms Casino Resort, Las Vegas, NV. Pantone’s work has been included in exhibitions at such institutions as Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Mesa, AZ; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.