Since 20 November 2017, INI has played host to the art exhibition “Form in Art: Art of Form”. Run concurrently with the “Growth form and self-organisation” programme, it has aimed to “explore the relationship between form, as understood mathematically, and art” and features works from 10 leading contemporary artists.
At the exhibition’s launch event, and shortly before he returned to his native Sao Paulo, we interviewed one of the contributing artists: Manoel Veiga.
> Tell us a little about yourself and your career as an artist
I’ll tell you a little bit about my education, for it explains much of what I’ve been doing as an artist for the last 15 years. I graduated as an electronic engineer and for 4 years I worked with industrial automation at a plant in Brazil. During my undergraduate years I worked at the Physics department of my university, and that was an experience that had great impact on me. I was already 27 when I took up art as a hobby. Self-taught at first, and then I took a few specific courses. But it was only after I definitely gave up on being an engineer that I dedicated myself full time to the visual arts. So after some years of experimenting and training, my work begun to deal with science in different ways, first in painting where I use mainly diffusion and gravity as tools to create the final result and then in a photographic series called Hubble where I use images from the cosmos.
> What reaction do you like to see in people when they view your works?
I like the viewer to be as free as possible to interpret my work and love to see different approaches to that depending on their education. For example, a cosmologist will see galaxies in my paintings and a geologist will see an aerial photograph. I love when they are surprised by what they see and also puzzled, it fuels imagination!
> This exhibition is focused upon the relationship between science and art. Tell us a little about that relationship as you’ve experienced it.
It was great to see different approaches and to meet and talk to the artists to better understand their relation to science, it was really enriching to me.
> What have been the most positive aspects of your participation so far, and why?
As mentioned, it was enriching to talk to other participants, to know different possibilities towards science but using art. Also very important to me was meeting some amazing people, mathematicians, physicists, engineers, who participated and gave talks at the seminar. I was overwhelmed by what they presented and my mind is spinning with new possibilities which I hope will give birth to new bodies of work, new collaborations!
“Form in Art: Art of Form” runs until 15 December 2017 and is open to the public during INI’s regular hours. Entrance is free.
To see more of Manoel’s work, visit www.manoelveiga.com.br
The gallery below comes courtesy of photographer Chris Loades, and previews other works presented in the “Form in Art: Art of Form” exhibition.
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