#video mapping

The Abbey of Montserrat is the spiritual centre of Catalonia. It's located in the Montserrat mountain in Central Catalonia, a unique-looking mountain in the middle of a plain, which makes this holy mountain be seen from many parts of the country.

There's written evidence that a small community of monks has lived there since the year 880, but in 1025 one of the monks started the community that continues nowadays. Thus, this year they're celebrating their 1,000th anniversary.

The legend that explains its foundation is the same as many holy places in Catholicism (Found Virgin Marys). In 880, a group of children found a statue in a cave in the mountain. They warned the bishop, who ordered to take the statue to the nearest important church (Manresa), but the statue was so supernaturally heavy that it was impossible to move it. This was interpreted as meaning that She did not want to be moved, and thus a church was built there for Her. (The statue that is worshipped nowadays dates from the 1100s.)

Montserrat has lived through a lot of history. The Virgin of Montserrat became the patron saint of Catalonia together with Saint George. It has survived the Napoleonic French troops who set fire to the convent, and the repression of the Francoist fascist dictatorship. Montserrat became a symbol of Catalan resistance.

But it has also lived through changes in art history. The hermit chapels, monastery and other spaces of the sanctuary have been built between the Middle Ages and the present. One thing has remained constant: the use of art and new technologies to represent the religious stories. In the Middle Ages, with Gothic architecture, a new technology was developed that quickly became loved as a way to represent the more ethereal aspect of God: stained glass windows, an art of colourful light. Nowadays, we have new ways of using light. I see this new "mapping" as a continuation of this tradition.

Notre-Dame de Paris. Una catedral sobrevalorada, no dudo de su valor arquitectónico y su mayor valor simbólico, pero comparada con la de Estrasburgo o la de Burgos hacen que Notre-Dame parezca una chabola.

LSD - Liquid State Drive

One Night Gallery Love, Alina Bohoru

/ Solo Show /

A two-part solo show in collaboration with One Night Gallery that happened over the summer of 2020 in both Bucharest & Timisoara, Romania.

One Night Gallery is an event focusing on Romanian contemporary art, innovation and technology, during which a different artist is invited every month to create a solo exhibition. They provide the artists with the technical means to experiment with new technological ways of rendering their work. 

For the Bucharest edition, we shifted from a single indoor location to multiple outdoor spaces around the downtown area, using solely windows and building facades. People were able to enjoy the exhibition as an art tour while taking a walk through the city, therefore minimizing as much as possible crowd gatherings in the context of the pandemic. As we scouted for spots, more and more businesses joined the circuit, resulting in a total of 13 locations - from galleries to shops and bars. 

The setups were divided into different concepts and mediums - from printed illustrations in some of the locations, to installations, video mapping, paste-ups or AR experiences in others.

Process:

First, I sketched the two main characters that would become the leitmotif of the event: Birdman (AKA G Dog) & Beeple

I then 3D modeled them in VR and we included them in an interactive Instagram filter that people could use during the event. We launched the filter together with the event teaser video:

Using the 3D model as a reference, we created a 14m tall inflatable installation of G Dog and hung it on the Știrbei Palace facade, inside Eden Terrace.

GUCCI Takeover

Another part of the event consisted of animating some of my characters and projecting them onto the windows of the Gucci Store in downtown Bucharest.

Event:

Two months after the Bucharest edition, we shipped the whole thing to my hometown, Timisoara, for a second event. The set was a large tram depot turned into a museum, with enough space to host all the artwork in one place: inflatable characters, installations, prints, and a tram that I painted back in 2019. This enabled me and the production team to experiment with a new display layout in a totally different setup. 

Event:

Credits: