Walter Miranda
Since the 1980s I have been using used computer boards and various pieces of electronic devices in my work. Sometimes sawing and grinding them to obtain figurative shapes and other times exploring their own geometric form. Plates are normally used incorporated into the traditional oil painting technique, creating a visual effect that I find interesting.
In 2017, I painted a work for the exhibition “Cartographies of Gaia”, which presented the image of an urban sunset, whose buildings were composed of electronic boards. In 2019, motivated by this idea, I created the ”Skyline” series in which the background of the works also represent various sunset scenes painted using expressionist brushstrokes inspired by the color palettes used by Velazques and Turner. In the foreground of each work, I used several internal cell phone boards and television remote controls to represent typical buildings in urban landscapes.
In 2021, during the pandemic, respecting the constructivist composition that I have used in my paintings for several decades, I continued the sunset theme and created another series of works whose geometry is directly correlated with the sky and urban buildings. However, this series is fully pictorial because I did not incorporate electronic boards. The only three-dimensional element that stands out in the composition is the Moon, which is inside an acrylic dome. The geometric and pictorial visual result is reminiscent of some works created by Mondrian and, therefore, the series was called “Mondrian Sunset”.
Subsequently, I created other works under the same theme where the geometric composition used to represent the sky is based on countless squares of different sizes painted in several layers of splashed paint. However, in this specific case, the geometric division of the sky makes references to the chromatic pixels of electronic images when magnified to the maximum. I also rescued the incorporation of the usual computer boards, cell phones, electronic games, etc. Thus, the contrast between the geometric background related to the sunset and the plaques representing city buildings establish a visual connection with a large part of my artistic production. For this reason, I decided to name the series “Walterian Sunset”, since the works in this series also present a visual and metonymic correlation between the plates, the geometrization of the sky and the interpretation that observers usually make when viewing my works.
Walter Miranda
