Artist Julio Cesar Gonzalez recently sat down with The Creators Project to talk about his transition from working primarily with video towards his new passion: kinetic sculpture and analog synth construction. Gonzalez taught himself how to use and build these tools via the internet, searching for guides, resources and bits of code that he could hack together in order to manifest his ultimate vision. The open access to DIY resources opened up a whole new world of possibilities for Gonzalez and enabled him to explore the fundamental elements of video—time, movement, and sound—in an entirely new way. Here’s an excerpt from The Creators Project interview:
The Creators Project: What are the similarities between your early work and your present work? What are the differences?
Gonzalez: I think I’m still in the period of my “early work” but if I were to compare what I did in college to now, I’ve become more image based. My attention span has matured. I work for an artist making large scale charcoal drawings about half my week, which has really honed my picture-making skills. Also, almost all of my artist friends are painters. In terms of similarities, my work still incorporates time, movement, and sound (fundamentals of video). In my latest show “So So, Incredibly Beautiful”, I made a series of kinetic light sculptures that I then took long-exposure photographs of and displayed together. I think of the long-exposure photographs as taking a video of the sculpture and then overlaying every frame of the video and displaying them at once. It adds another dimension to the sculptures that you can’t see with the naked eye. They’re echoes of the sculptures’ forms, which is why I call them ghosts.
What is your work about? What are the topics, themes, and ideas you’re exploring?
I never set out to tackle any specific theme or topic when making my work. My work comes about subconsciously. I think the meaning comes about through the whole process of creation and exhibition. I create something that reflects some thought process I was having, then someone comes over and sees it in my studio or in a show and they have their own reaction to it. Hopefully, it resonates with someone and some nonverbal understanding happens. Another level of meaning exists in what medium that whole process is filtered through. My work involves a lot of technology mostly because that’s what surrounds me. I could either react against my environment or embrace it. At the moment, I’m playing along.
To read the full interview and see more photos of Gonzalez’s work head over to always inspirational The Creators Project.
