Oscar Ledesma

Artist & Gallerist & Curator

28. Dezember 2016
von oscarledesma
Kommentare deaktiviert für Selected Works. 2012 – 2015

Selected Works. 2012 – 2015

Oscar Ledesma.

El catálogo de mis obras de los últimos tres años.

Las obras, los textos y el diseño editorial es mío.

You can see this Catalogue online here or you can order a signed print copy here

 

 

6. September 2016
von oscarledesma
Kommentare deaktiviert für Stan Getz with Guest Artist Laurindo Almeida

Stan Getz with Guest Artist Laurindo Almeida

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La portada tiene un Sol que pareciera uno maya o inca, hecho con pequeño mosaicos en colores que recuerdan a la tierra. Es de los Verve Records, impreso en Alemania en 1966, diez años antes de que yo naciera. Lo compré hace casi un mes, con la intención de escucharlo y escribir sobre él, el primero de una serie: El Vinyl de la semana.

El de la tienda de discos me conoce muy bien, su negocio esta al lado de donde estaba mi galeria de arte. Conoce bien mis gustos musicales: Bossa Nova, Bebop, Trova, etc. La semana anterior había comprado Tristeza de Oscar Peterson  Así que ya estabe encaminado. Era inevitable. Te va a gustar, me dijo.

El disco viene en una funda café , con solamente el logo de Verve.

Lado 1. 1. Minina Moca. Es tan retro hablar de un LP, poner la aguja al principio y escuchar el ruidito que hacen los discos antes de empezar (y que dejó de existir con los cds y mp3s). Entonces empieza, sin temores, así como si nada, una samba, un ritmo cadencioso, Stan Getz sube y baja a travéz de la melodía y la batería se disuelve en el fondo. Uno se siente inmediatemente transportado a alguna playa de noche, mareado talvez por un mojito, luego, el saxofón se silencia y empiezan a bailar el bajo y la guitarra en un dialogo sugerente.

2. Once Again. Jobim. Seguimos con un Bossa Nova lento, que invita a bailar a a escucharlo una noche fresca acompañado de un vinito blanco. La pieza se desarrolla como una tertulia, en la que todos poco a poco tienen algo que decir, se interrumpen unos a otros y se desarrollan pequeños monólogo.

3. Winter Moon. Una de las piezas lentas y románticas del Disco. Es como estar en una película de Peter Sellers, acampañado de Claudia Cardinale y Capucine, despues de algún rodaje en Suiza o en elguna isla griega ¡vamos que solo de escucharla uno se siente más sofisticado y cosmopolita!

El Lado 1 se termina, la aguja recorre los últimos centímetros y el r-r-r-r-r se oye hasta que la punta llega al fina. Clac. Y hay que darle vuelta al disco.

Lado 2. 1. Do what you do. El tenor del disco ya se plantó en el lado 1, ahora se pueden desarrollar los temas más libremente. Ya sebemos a que atenernos, samba y bossa nova se entrelazan.

2. Samba da Sahra.  Ya se va plantendo la salida del disco. Solamente son seis piezas y esta es la penúltima. La guitarra y el saxofón se contrapuntean, Getz y Almeida se van dando pulsos. La pieza termina con los mismos acordes con los que empezó.

3. Maracatu-Too. Es la pieza que menos me gusta del disco, talvez por que es más rápida que las otras, digo, si ya estamos por terminar el disco porqué hacerlo así, como a las carreras, la música es mas bien de carnaval. Por momentos la base ritmica de tambores y timbales dominan a la melodía.

El disco termina abruptamente. Tan solo han sido poco más de treinta minutos de buena música.

28. Juni 2016
von oscarledesma
Kommentare deaktiviert für Retreat – Les ecrivains maudits

Retreat – Les ecrivains maudits

Just like writing, painting usually starts out as an introspective process.

Jorge Luis Borges once said that he was much prouder of all the books he had read than of those he wrote himself. A quote which to me shows a kind of false modesty. But I recognize myself in this quote: I, too, am very proud of all the books I have read throughout the years. These images are thus meant as a hommage to authors, who, as I discovered them at various points in my life, represent important landmarks in my personal story. The series is conceived as a  work in progress, since my personal list of authors with that quality is quite long: Baudelaire, Papini, Nietzsche, Fuentes, Faulkner, Sontag, etc.

When I read Emil Cioran for the first time, I was fascinated by his aphorisms and how they are able to recreate nothingness and hopeless situations with an immense power. For me, Cioran will always stand for a mixture between Nietzschean aphorisms and Japanese haiku poetry: highly sophisticated, perfect pearls of truth.

Charles Bukowski is the direct opposite to this kind of literature. Using direct, violent words, he describes the pitilessness of life, our tough reality. Sometimes, he might seem a little too bold and simple, but he is always poetic. He is kind of a dirty John Fante combined with an alcoholic Knut Hamsun.

Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett, on the other hand, taught that in literature (and thus art), one is not only able to free oneself from social conventions, but also from the seemingly unshakable laws of grammar. Tropic of Cancer and Molloy are the most striking examples of this type of literature.

But my personal favorite is still Roberto Bolaño. I think he is and will be the best writer of our generation, of this century. Within a very small range of published works, he managed to present to us and combine an all-encompassing bildungsroman (a la Thomas Mann‘s Zauberberg), new experimental forms (a la Ulysses by James Joyce) and pointless violence (as in Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald), Bolaño is our modern Virgil, a literary tutor and companion during our earthly journey.

28. Juni 2016
von oscarledesma
Kommentare deaktiviert für Forest 2.0

Forest 2.0

Chance creates beauty
Software. Digital print. Large variables. 2014.

I often promised myself to never let my work as a mathematician and programmer influence my work as an artist. But sometimes it nevertheless happens, for instance in my project Forest 2.0. I hit on the basic idea while contemplating an older oil painting of mine, which shows a symmetrical tree diagram ending in colorful blossoms, together with mysterious mathematical formulas.

My educational background as a number theorist played an important role during the genesis of Forest 2.0: I wrote a computer program, based on the ancient idea that any number can be written as a product of prime numbers. After entering some parameters, this code generates cryptic looking tree diagrams and saves them as vector graphics. I then edit and adjust them using an image editing tool. Since the results are saved as infinitely scalable graphics, they can be printed out in any size.

But although I am responsible for the whole creative process – from the mathematical knowledge required to code the recursive script to the digital editing and printing the result – randomness always plays a role in the process. At its core, chance is a very natural and likewise artistic entity, since it creates beauty. In any closed system with continuously arising random events, human beings recognize a form of pleasing, often truly aesthetic symmetry.

Of course, I always define a specific height and a starting number for all trees, which roughly control the ferocity of their proliferation. But their specfic look is always created by a randomized computer algorithm based on constantly decreasing numerical values. I also let the algorithm randomly define some color parameters.

One thing, however, is always done by myself and not by chance: the actual selection of which of the trees created get printed out and framed in the end. Thus, ultimately, the artist still has final authority when it comes to defining what a real artwork is – and not randomness.

Buy a Print here

Bildschirmfoto 2016-06-28 um 21.58.34