Ezequiel, in your latest exhibition, Species, you present a series of pieces through which you play and transgress the traditional concept that we have of nature and its organic and soft shapes in order to take it to a digital geometrisation that translates its forms into discrete objects with right angles. How did this idea come about?
In recent years I have been exploring the concept of nature. In my daily life I am surrounded by many plants, here in my studio I have bonsais and other plants that I coexist with. But I also like to think about these plants within a digital medium. In my piece Flow (2023) I had already begun to explore some dynamics that we encounter in nature, such as the movement of water, but using materials that are not fluid. In the case of Species, the idea was to try to approach nature —which is already organic, soft, harmonious, circular, sinuous— as having hard edges and defined geometric shapes. As I was developing the narrative, I realized that in this imagined world, many characters coexisted: the trunks, the birds, the trees with that particular shape, the different things that happened. It seemed to me that these different elements were the protagonists of these pieces, natural species of a digital world that do not exist in our physical world and whose forms play with the impossible.
People always see my pieces as very meditative or peaceful. This is because my creative practice is very meditative and artisanal: the modeling, the textures, the rendering times are extremely long. All of these processes take time. But I think it is possible to convey this same feeling of pleasure that we experience whether we are pruning a physical tree or a digital tree.
Photo by Solene Milcent. Courtesy of Ezequiel Pini
Your work combines different practices that are common in disciplines such as art, architecture and design, since many of them are based on the use of modeling and visualisation software. How do you use these tools in your creative process?
I have always liked to explore new disciplines: architecture, object design, short films, experiences, virtual reality... I found a pattern in all these explorations, and that is that they all start from digital sketches that you can play with to visualise them before their material realisation. My work starts from an infinite canvas, a tridimensional interface where I start to create, put lights, position cameras, shapes and materials. For me, this is a starting point, not an endpoint. People often see CGI and 3D only as visualisation tools, but I've always been against this. For me, these are creative tools, like a paintbrush for a painter. Someone can make a sculpture in any shape they want using these tools. Forms that do not have to follow the patterns and norms of the tangible world. It's about manifesting concepts, ideas and visions with the tools I know how to use to bring them to reality. The digital canvas offers me the freedom to propose creatively and imagine without restrictions. I like to start there because those are the techniques I use. Everything is born with the digital, and then it can be translated to a physical space or remain completely in its digital medium, it all depends on the type of interaction that I’m looking for in each particular case.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Over the last few years, we have seen greater adoption by galleries and institutions of digital art. Since you have worked with this medium for decades, how have you seen this evolution in the acceptance of digital art?
Some galleries have begun to value this medium and are now beginning to talk about digital art, but institutionally and culturally it was very difficult. For many years, museums and galleries were reluctant to exhibit digital art. How could a piece like this be in a museum or a gallery?
What do you do? Do you print it? For me this was frustrating because I use these media and, just because these tools were not legitimised in the art world, people often thought they did not belong in these spaces. But then the social media boom happened: Pinterest, Instagram... People began to see that the spaces that I created only because I liked them and that had no relationship with the physical world, featured some elements that felt habitable. From there I began to receive comments wondering if what I did was real or not, and where they could visit my pieces or buy them. This made me see that people were interested in this type of art.
The issue of whether this is real or not real, physical or digital, or other similar divisions, have always been part of these conversations. That's where I like to be playing, what is one or what is the other? For me, what I do is real because I am creating it, using whatever tools I have. But now the concept of the real is evolving further with the new generations who are already completely living in a hybrid world.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Something that I find interesting about your pieces is the absence of humans in these utopian landscapes. Why this decision not to include human figures in your pieces?
I have never modeled humans in a digital form. I think 3D humans make the piece lose its magic and it leads to conceptualisations that I don't want to link to what I do. By putting a human in this context, you immediately begin to compare whether it looks real or not. This interferes with the contemplative process. I prefer to use other objects, such as a chair, to offer a human scale to the landscapes. I find this much more poetic and interesting than trying to model a human and trying to make them not look like an alien. Instead of inserting a human model within the piece, I prefer that the viewer see these landscapes from a first-person perspective. The positioning of the cameras presents a subjective point of view. This relates to the meditative nature of my pieces. It is a personal practice that translates into a personal contemplative experience.
Another aspect that seems to me to also be of great importance in this work is the music. The music you use not only accompanies it but also gives a rhythm to the images that complement the visual narrative. How did the music for these pieces come about?
Definitely. Music is a very important added value in the piece. I make these pieces with Aimar Molero, an extremely talented musician. I have here all the documentation of the software programs he used to create it. He brought the same idea of a square nature to sound sequencer software, where he also rendered geometric figures, such as rhombuses, in a gridded matrix that then played the notes according to their positioning. Although this is not visible in the piece, it is captured sonically and is interwoven with the visual narrative that I was trying to create with my work. I found this super interesting.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Ezequiel, in your latest exhibition, Species, you present a series of pieces through which you play and transgress the traditional concept that we have of nature and its organic and soft shapes in order to take it to a digital geometrisation that translates its forms into discrete objects with right angles. How did this idea come about?
In recent years I have been exploring the concept of nature. In my daily life I am surrounded by many plants, here in my studio I have bonsais and other plants that I coexist with. But I also like to think about these plants within a digital medium. In my piece Flow (2023) I had already begun to explore some dynamics that we encounter in nature, such as the movement of water, but using materials that are not fluid. In the case of Species, the idea was to try to approach nature —which is already organic, soft, harmonious, circular, sinuous— as having hard edges and defined geometric shapes. As I was developing the narrative, I realized that in this imagined world, many characters coexisted: the trunks, the birds, the trees with that particular shape, the different things that happened. It seemed to me that these different elements were the protagonists of these pieces, natural species of a digital world that do not exist in our physical world and whose forms play with the impossible.
People always see my pieces as very meditative or peaceful. This is because my creative practice is very meditative and artisanal: the modeling, the textures, the rendering times are extremely long. All of these processes take time. But I think it is possible to convey this same feeling of pleasure that we experience whether we are pruning a physical tree or a digital tree.
Photo by Solene Milcent. Courtesy of Ezequiel Pini
Your work combines different practices that are common in disciplines such as art, architecture and design, since many of them are based on the use of modeling and visualisation software. How do you use these tools in your creative process?
I have always liked to explore new disciplines: architecture, object design, short films, experiences, virtual reality... I found a pattern in all these explorations, and that is that they all start from digital sketches that you can play with to visualise them before their material realisation. My work starts from an infinite canvas, a tridimensional interface where I start to create, put lights, position cameras, shapes and materials. For me, this is a starting point, not an endpoint. People often see CGI and 3D only as visualisation tools, but I've always been against this. For me, these are creative tools, like a paintbrush for a painter. Someone can make a sculpture in any shape they want using these tools. Forms that do not have to follow the patterns and norms of the tangible world. It's about manifesting concepts, ideas and visions with the tools I know how to use to bring them to reality. The digital canvas offers me the freedom to propose creatively and imagine without restrictions. I like to start there because those are the techniques I use. Everything is born with the digital, and then it can be translated to a physical space or remain completely in its digital medium, it all depends on the type of interaction that I’m looking for in each particular case.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Over the last few years, we have seen greater adoption by galleries and institutions of digital art. Since you have worked with this medium for decades, how have you seen this evolution in the acceptance of digital art?
Some galleries have begun to value this medium and are now beginning to talk about digital art, but institutionally and culturally it was very difficult. For many years, museums and galleries were reluctant to exhibit digital art. How could a piece like this be in a museum or a gallery?
What do you do? Do you print it? For me this was frustrating because I use these media and, just because these tools were not legitimised in the art world, people often thought they did not belong in these spaces. But then the social media boom happened: Pinterest, Instagram... People began to see that the spaces that I created only because I liked them and that had no relationship with the physical world, featured some elements that felt habitable. From there I began to receive comments wondering if what I did was real or not, and where they could visit my pieces or buy them. This made me see that people were interested in this type of art.
The issue of whether this is real or not real, physical or digital, or other similar divisions, have always been part of these conversations. That's where I like to be playing, what is one or what is the other? For me, what I do is real because I am creating it, using whatever tools I have. But now the concept of the real is evolving further with the new generations who are already completely living in a hybrid world.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Something that I find interesting about your pieces is the absence of humans in these utopian landscapes. Why this decision not to include human figures in your pieces?
I have never modeled humans in a digital form. I think 3D humans make the piece lose its magic and it leads to conceptualisations that I don't want to link to what I do. By putting a human in this context, you immediately begin to compare whether it looks real or not. This interferes with the contemplative process. I prefer to use other objects, such as a chair, to offer a human scale to the landscapes. I find this much more poetic and interesting than trying to model a human and trying to make them not look like an alien. Instead of inserting a human model within the piece, I prefer that the viewer see these landscapes from a first-person perspective. The positioning of the cameras presents a subjective point of view. This relates to the meditative nature of my pieces. It is a personal practice that translates into a personal contemplative experience.
Another aspect that seems to me to also be of great importance in this work is the music. The music you use not only accompanies it but also gives a rhythm to the images that complement the visual narrative. How did the music for these pieces come about?
Definitely. Music is a very important added value in the piece. I make these pieces with Aimar Molero, an extremely talented musician. I have here all the documentation of the software programs he used to create it. He brought the same idea of a square nature to sound sequencer software, where he also rendered geometric figures, such as rhombuses, in a gridded matrix that then played the notes according to their positioning. Although this is not visible in the piece, it is captured sonically and is interwoven with the visual narrative that I was trying to create with my work. I found this super interesting.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Ezequiel, in your latest exhibition, Species, you present a series of pieces through which you play and transgress the traditional concept that we have of nature and its organic and soft shapes in order to take it to a digital geometrisation that translates its forms into discrete objects with right angles. How did this idea come about?
In recent years I have been exploring the concept of nature. In my daily life I am surrounded by many plants, here in my studio I have bonsais and other plants that I coexist with. But I also like to think about these plants within a digital medium. In my piece Flow (2023) I had already begun to explore some dynamics that we encounter in nature, such as the movement of water, but using materials that are not fluid. In the case of Species, the idea was to try to approach nature —which is already organic, soft, harmonious, circular, sinuous— as having hard edges and defined geometric shapes. As I was developing the narrative, I realized that in this imagined world, many characters coexisted: the trunks, the birds, the trees with that particular shape, the different things that happened. It seemed to me that these different elements were the protagonists of these pieces, natural species of a digital world that do not exist in our physical world and whose forms play with the impossible.
People always see my pieces as very meditative or peaceful. This is because my creative practice is very meditative and artisanal: the modeling, the textures, the rendering times are extremely long. All of these processes take time. But I think it is possible to convey this same feeling of pleasure that we experience whether we are pruning a physical tree or a digital tree.
Photo by Solene Milcent. Courtesy of Ezequiel Pini
Your work combines different practices that are common in disciplines such as art, architecture and design, since many of them are based on the use of modeling and visualisation software. How do you use these tools in your creative process?
I have always liked to explore new disciplines: architecture, object design, short films, experiences, virtual reality... I found a pattern in all these explorations, and that is that they all start from digital sketches that you can play with to visualise them before their material realisation. My work starts from an infinite canvas, a tridimensional interface where I start to create, put lights, position cameras, shapes and materials. For me, this is a starting point, not an endpoint. People often see CGI and 3D only as visualisation tools, but I've always been against this. For me, these are creative tools, like a paintbrush for a painter. Someone can make a sculpture in any shape they want using these tools. Forms that do not have to follow the patterns and norms of the tangible world. It's about manifesting concepts, ideas and visions with the tools I know how to use to bring them to reality. The digital canvas offers me the freedom to propose creatively and imagine without restrictions. I like to start there because those are the techniques I use. Everything is born with the digital, and then it can be translated to a physical space or remain completely in its digital medium, it all depends on the type of interaction that I’m looking for in each particular case.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Over the last few years, we have seen greater adoption by galleries and institutions of digital art. Since you have worked with this medium for decades, how have you seen this evolution in the acceptance of digital art?
Some galleries have begun to value this medium and are now beginning to talk about digital art, but institutionally and culturally it was very difficult. For many years, museums and galleries were reluctant to exhibit digital art. How could a piece like this be in a museum or a gallery?
What do you do? Do you print it? For me this was frustrating because I use these media and, just because these tools were not legitimised in the art world, people often thought they did not belong in these spaces. But then the social media boom happened: Pinterest, Instagram... People began to see that the spaces that I created only because I liked them and that had no relationship with the physical world, featured some elements that felt habitable. From there I began to receive comments wondering if what I did was real or not, and where they could visit my pieces or buy them. This made me see that people were interested in this type of art.
The issue of whether this is real or not real, physical or digital, or other similar divisions, have always been part of these conversations. That's where I like to be playing, what is one or what is the other? For me, what I do is real because I am creating it, using whatever tools I have. But now the concept of the real is evolving further with the new generations who are already completely living in a hybrid world.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist
Something that I find interesting about your pieces is the absence of humans in these utopian landscapes. Why this decision not to include human figures in your pieces?
I have never modeled humans in a digital form. I think 3D humans make the piece lose its magic and it leads to conceptualisations that I don't want to link to what I do. By putting a human in this context, you immediately begin to compare whether it looks real or not. This interferes with the contemplative process. I prefer to use other objects, such as a chair, to offer a human scale to the landscapes. I find this much more poetic and interesting than trying to model a human and trying to make them not look like an alien. Instead of inserting a human model within the piece, I prefer that the viewer see these landscapes from a first-person perspective. The positioning of the cameras presents a subjective point of view. This relates to the meditative nature of my pieces. It is a personal practice that translates into a personal contemplative experience.
Another aspect that seems to me to also be of great importance in this work is the music. The music you use not only accompanies it but also gives a rhythm to the images that complement the visual narrative. How did the music for these pieces come about?
Definitely. Music is a very important added value in the piece. I make these pieces with Aimar Molero, an extremely talented musician. I have here all the documentation of the software programs he used to create it. He brought the same idea of a square nature to sound sequencer software, where he also rendered geometric figures, such as rhombuses, in a gridded matrix that then played the notes according to their positioning. Although this is not visible in the piece, it is captured sonically and is interwoven with the visual narrative that I was trying to create with my work. I found this super interesting.
Six N. Five (Ezequiel Pini) Species, 2023-2024. Courtesy of the artist