For us, art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing
to take the risk
Mark Rothko
An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks that a good idea would
be to give them
Andy Warhol
William Rafael Marquina Buitrago (1967) is an artist who currently lives and works in Venezuela. In 2002 he graduated as a visual artist at the Art Faculty of the University of The Andes and starts that same year Masters studies in philosophy. In 2007 made his experience as a postgraduate academic scholar in the area of graphics techniques for graphic design students. In 2007 also starts his research on light and reflective dynamics on polished surfaces, carrying out their first two solo exhibitions: Esencias at the Cultural Center Foundation Museum of Colonial Art from the city of Merida, a series of open volumes sculptures made with sheets of aluminum, and its second exhibition Cuidado. Camino y Límite in the Gallery La Otra Banda of the University of The Andes, where experiments with random paintings done on-site along with an installation made with erects nails that covered much of the floor of the exhibition. In 2010 it will continue her Ph.D. studies in philosophy, at the time that works until the year 2013 as a professor in the Faculty of Art.
Untitled
Wear on aluminum, painting and wooden box.
111 x 71 x 9 cm
2007
Permanent Collection of the Museum of Modern Art Juan Astorga Anta (MAMJAA)
Assembly with wear on aluminum
100 x 78 cm
2009
Mixed media with wear on aluminum,
128 x 149 x 2 cm
2011
Between the years 2008 and 2012, continued using resources poor in drawing and painting, but especially these it innovated when it used them on medium and large format aluminum stands, being interested in doing works with maps and adding to his research on the light. William is the first artist from Merida which innovated the concept of maps as plastic expression, searching and questioning through media problems geopolitical, looming in its decadence and characterizing those events than in its historical moment had an impact and that are currently impacting the whole world (the deaths of Palestinian children with the escalation of the war in Gaza between Palestinians and Jews, desolate hope and survival of the people of Haiti in the middle of the earthquake and the longing for freedom has always preexisted in Cuba). Three times, three historical areas that William cartography to indicate which regional covers not only the world of the earthly but also of its trans-terreno. What it is not narrated and is inexhaustible in the spirit of these events, the artist takes away them and rearranged on a map that makes visible its reorientation as visual thinking.
Mixed media and painting with wear on aluminum
122 x 244 x 2 cm
2012
Gradual Metamorphosis of Mackandal
Assembly and paint wear on aluminum
122 x 244 x 2 cm
2012
Mixed with wear on aluminum
122 x 244 x 2 cm
2012
The process of mapping as a work takes models of representation and interpretation amalgamated with different experiences Visual and conceptual, expanding it the mode in which we attend, organize our spaces in the ground of our subjectivity, to the most possible transcendent moments in different regions of the real and unreal time in human life. Thus, it becomes his third and most important exhibition in 2012, called Cartografías Regionales de lo Terreno y Transterreno at Museum of Modern Art Juan Astorga Anta MAMJAA.
William continues experiencing brisk way where paramount are his essays with natural light as the raw material in the drawing. Thus, drawing becomes a process of meditation of the stroke with the use of the dynamism of the reflective light, caused by mechanical wear running with abrasive media and scratches on aluminum foil. Drawing is here more ethereal, tracing acquires dynamisms twinkling with halos from lights that are distorted to change the direction of the gaze, causing sensations and three-dimensional visual effects that appear on the surface of metal by the action of their multiple wears, or as the artist usually call them: <<volúmenes fantasmales>>, at the time that assures us that: <<…con esta técnica he venido superando los medios y efectos ya tradicionales en el dibujo…>>.
This experimentation can be seen in its new realization of the year 2013 with two drawings: Subjectus in the well of memory: distraction and concentration and the way Subjectus: mistrust and security, in which the artist feel a special attraction to the subjectivity of the human phenomena. Both parts are related with one of his earlier works Subjectus Topographies of his solo exhibition in 2012, in which the artist uses unfolding mechanisms to try to recreate the ambiguity of being in their different moles of the subjectus (which is below what is shown of each individual body, of every human being) <<.. .that which is unfolded in every one of us as physicus corpus and corpus mentis and returned to join in each human individuation as a single ego be... >>.
Mixed on aluminum
122 x 244 x 2 cm
2012
Subjectus in the well of memory: concentration and distraction
Industrial paint on aluminum with wear
76 x 122 x 2 cm
2013
The way Subjectus: security and mistrust
Industrial paint on aluminum with wear
64 x 122 x 2 cm
2013
These proposals in the field of figurative show us one of their sheds where light, a matter of drawing, meets a reflective paper on issues of human subjectivity and hence its need for trying to figure as an element. But not only his works include figuration, as we shall see, the artist systematizes its subjects with expressive and abstract proposals. Works such as Absorption (2014), Map of flights (2014) and States Parallels (2015, in the process), tell us about issues that go beyond criticism to venture through an abstract expressionism, in the phenomena of the human spirit in experiential contexts. In Absorption, the artist to get it out of one's system with a liberating position of ideologies and mental ties that has to do rather with assumed himself within the physical laws of the universe, which, he explains <<... "absorb" is perhaps a feeling human, surround and exhaust, very natural in the midst of a crisis, which the same people warns not to be mired in conflict and conformity of the same and always failed, individuations false ideologies and forms work corrupt... >>. In his work he incorporates organic elements as plush textiles that concerns the human presence in their waste, is also added himself as a presence through his own hair and the sense of bestiality is also notoriously incorporating the hairs of the dog as a condition of the animal being. All these elements bring together them in a symbiosis surround, inspired in pulsars light from a galaxy that recreates with the shine of the metal, which sit on a continuous kinetic circular with an absorbent effect towards the Centre of the work.
Oil, acrylic, plush, human hair and hair of dog on worn out aluminum
81 x 122 x 2 cm
2014
In Map of flights, the artist outlines a collective feeling pervaded at the people of his country that sees its hopes truncated in the middle of various restrictive measures of the Government and ideological and movements of protests that deal to win the political future of Venezuelans. This work, which transmits this instinct of flight described on a horizontal aluminum support by way of a large map and with wings of bright feathers in different positions to take on the Act of flight, based on the same concept of wanting to absorb into the escape of his work Absorption. However, most of the wings are severely clogged, interrupted and covered by clusters of dreslos of wool, dog hair, human hair and felts, indicating the feelings that strike every day between Venezuelans (submission, irrationality, and humanity). All these elements determine their significance from slogans of common vocabulary and verbs, articulating ideas and feelings that around political issues are thus always be the common thinking of the escape, escape, or turn our backs on everything, fly away.
oil, acrylic, plush, human hair, wool, and hair of dog on worn out aluminum
122 x 244 x 2 cm
2014
An important aspect of the creation of his works from the year 2015, has to do with its curious to understand the new results of the studies of quantum physics that try to explain the mechanisms of the physical reality of the matter and the mechanics of the universe, especially that of "Particle Dios" (known as the Higgs Boson). No doubt the fact that an artist wants to interfere in the physical theories, it is indiscreet but is not in the ownership of the scientific results pure which is where William covers to learn more about light as the purest object aesthetic of his work.
In the view of the artist: <<If the vibrations of waves caused by the photons of visible light bouncing on the surface of other objects making them visible, and checking so the real-life proceeds in the same matter physical reality, then it would be very interesting to know from science what is light and its relationship with matter and thus further understand their relationship with the art where historically for the artist, light is one of the characteristics of art.>>
William feels increasingly motivated to follow their studies on the light, toward increasingly experimental searches, because he knows of the enormous potential of these means with which it has been tested. Currently, the artist prepares his fourth solo exhibition for the year 2016, working in a Studio improvised in Ejido, near the city of Mérida (Venezuela), the place where it came out at the beginning of the year 2014 two of his works for an exhibition in New York with the Agora Gallery. This experience in the US has led him to approach the public to showcase their works through social networks Facebook, Twitter, with the SaatchiArt.com gallery and through network Linkedin.com.
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