Damián Ortega

(Laughs) Flyer pieces!

It's a long story…I will describe it to you quickly: I started as a cartoonist because I wanted to be a muralist painter. A very naive idea at that moment, but I had decided to design my own career. I thought the mural was a kind of political cartoon on a large scale. Then I began studying with a cartoonist. Also, I started in a painting workshop group. I tried to learn about these divided worlds. Painting was the way to understand materials and little by little I started to be more involved in the tridimensionality of the paint and to conceptualise the pieces. In the end I was painting car pieces and the jump into objects was very logical and obvious. It is better to work with real objects instead of trying to represent them.

It was a work about collectivism and the global or grupal participation with individual elements. I mean, it was the analysis of a system. A complex system divided and classified in functions, relations, communications…But the piece opens the discussion to many layers and possibilities. The piece became very popular and this opened it to interpretations in different places and countries.

I used to be very curious with my brother when we were just kids. We opened many objects and things to see how they worked and how they were made. It was a funny task, and of course we destroyed everything. I don't know, I think we always thought things are not only what they represent. Things can be something different.

What I have appreciated very much is when I have found myself doing real research, when I have been able to go further and deeper into the project. I think when an artist defines his or her own investigation and has the chance to open the alternatives to go into it is amazing. Everything runs well, there are no stops, no failures, no mistakes because everything is part of the experiment. Right or wrong doesn’t matter. Everything complements the investigation. I love that situation. It doesn't always happen in the right places, sometimes a good show takes place somewhere not many people can visit, or the opposite, a terrible show is presented in the most popular place.

Like many people, I was confined [in lockdown] and I felt anxious but at the same time a kind of pleasure to have time to be alone and work in privacy. I tried to recycle materials stored in my studio, residues from other pieces and wasted materials. I found this process very intuitive, I just started putting and mixing materials to release pressure and I played with faces and random materials. My father had just passed away and he was an actor. I saw him many times watching himself in front of the mirror creating a character and inventing his way of walking and talking.
I always think of this time as a great moment and place for invention and imagination. I realised the process of doing the masks was very easy and also very joyful. In the end it was a representation of this new era and the materials of this specific place and time. It meant looking for solutions and expressions. Tortillas or rice paper are daily materials that are consumed at home. I'm sure if I had been in New York or Berlin, a different thing would have happened.

The reaction is lovely. I think people and friends are sharing some similar experience and feelings. I mean, I can't see any bigger productions in arts and that kind of art produced as industrial objects with anonymous workers and the artist as a brand. On the other hand, all the young artists that are fascinated with technology, with ambitious systems of production, and with overthinking and over conceptualising their works. I respect them and I'm sure there are many amazing pieces but I feel totally out of this logic and I tried to go for a straightforward and personal experience. With a human scale and kind of homemade [style].
It's funny how the formats change in a crazy way and sometimes when you have the chance to see the real and original piece of art you think, I thought it was bigger. Or sometimes museums amplify the art works to make them more popular. The original became insufficient and tinny after this spectacularization of the art. It’s fun for me to make these decisions with format to save and keep some humanism.

I think art is context and food is part of life and culture. I choose daily life materials because I feel we are what we eat, what we buy and what we use in our lives - sometimes an egg or sometimes french fries or Belgian chocolates. I mean we are all this.

To my surprise, I found that masks decide most of the time what they want or what they need. They are a little bit like children. I have two daughters and I can push them a little bit to do what I think is important, but I am learning to let it go and I am trying to support them. They know better than me what they need and what they want – when I force or push them is a waste of energy for both sides.
If you are blind and do not listen to what they tell you, it is not like magic, but I’m sure that if you are receptive and listen to the forms and shapes and specially to the accidents, you can see how expressive they are in themselves.
I think the amazing pieces in art history are part of this chance and opportunity. I’m sure She-Goat by Picasso would have been impossible if he hadn’t encountered the palm tree leaves and a few other materials by accident. I'm sure he didn’t research different kinds of leaves on amazon to buy the right one. He was playing and resolving. Maybe the same happens with the goat and Automobile Tire Print by Rauschenberg, I don't know. I just prefer at this moment freedom and improvisation. Intuitive works.

I like what you said. Cultures and humans, we create masks, and masks are contemporaneous sisters of the fire and the sharpness of knives. They have evolved with the human being and become part of our tools of communication, myth, fear, irony and the critic. We can look back and understand a lot about a civilisation by observing its ways of wearing and constructing masks.

It's important because we have grown into the ideal of production, but this means waste and consumption. And also some emptiness on the other hand. I mean, [until recently] we didn't have a clear understanding of the importance of the ecology and also the responsible use of nature.
Now we should have more clarity. Our system is just looking at one side of the problem and this is off balance. We should decolonise the systems of production. And this is not only about materials, it is also about people and how cities are receiving thousands of millions of people and immigrants.

I don't know, I hope all this global experience really teaches us to be better and generous, to be responsible and have fun with less. To understand life as an opportunity to share. The inertia is strong and difficult to be stopped, maybe it is a matter of doing small actions and to start with some alternatives.