A digital book about objects soon to become an objectin conversation with Claudia Peña Salinas

The book in relationship to installation

The book is a way of knowing some back story of the installation, another information that, for me, is important. I’m not asking that whoever sees the installation needs the book as a key, but it’s another layer to it,all the associations that you would have.

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These objects are very deliberately chosen and that’s what the book does. It shows a procession of thought, of search, of eliminating some things and focusing on others so that these objects are living in a same time, having come from the same moment of collection.

Language plays a part on the book. It’s not just a collection of images, but my voice is present in a way that it isn’t in the installation. Maybe there’s more openess for someone to come in and view these things and make associations.

There is nothing too straightforward about it.

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When I have text and image, I’m guiding someone through this process

With the sculptural or painterly installation objects there is no beginning or end that is clear. You can start anywhere, it’s more open.

Things take more importance according to what you have associations with and not because I’m somewhat dictating them. I have less control in installations and I feel like in the book I can emphasize things more, but again that’s with language.

It’s a cleaner version of note-taking, like a journal.

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When I made paintings, these things traveled with me. They go on one wall or another and the painting remains the same.

With installation, I take photographs and I try to capture what these things were doing in the space, and I know it will never be recreated because it is not site specific, but it is still playing off on that site. There is an important element of that site that I can’t recreate.

The book is that document that will always remain the same. It focuses on the image and the story of the making of theinstallation. It is some version of it that will remain the same. I guess thats what it does.

The object versus the image of the object

If you look around my space, sometimesyou’ll find the image and then you’ll find the object, versions of the image, versions of the object. Maybe I’m just equating them, maybe there’s no difference to me, they’re equally coveted to me.

In GULLIVER that was happening much more deliberately.

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I had this photograph of a cake in which this ex boyfriend of mine is blowing this “1” and this image of the number became used in GULLIVER, but then I wanted to find the same candle I used for his cake. I finally found it and used it. One of the tables had the “1” and then you would go to the image of the “1”, and then there was another table onto which I poured the same colors in wax.

There were many things doing that... going from object to image. Maybe it’s also a way of collapsing space/time. It’s not the thing itself, but it is of that family.

Now what I would do is contact this rainbow candles company directly. This is how the obsession goes. You want the actual thing that they used. As time goes by and I make more of theseinstallations, the more true I want theintallation to be. There’s no fake in it, becasue if I’m faking it, I’m faking it for myself.

There’s this trueness to material that comes first for myself.

I don’t try to make much of a distinctionbetween an anonymous image and an image I took. I kind of equate them. Sometimes personal photographs just come into the work.

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Current projects and obsessions: Pink Panther and “la naranja”

For this Pink Panther book I’m working on, the idea is that it is printed on pink paper and these are all phototgraphs that I grabbed under the heading of “Pink Panther” from theinternet. If I’m somewhere on the steet and I see a Pink Panther something, I will take a photograph of it and make it part of this archive.

We tune off a lot and the moment our attention becomes sharp in terms of a concept, you filter things through that.

Focusing on associations of a naranja, I’m just operating on that term.

You learn something and you begin to see it and be around it a lot. It’s good this project is almost over, it’s not healthy for us to function like that. We learn things and then we learn something else, but with obsessions you stay too long and people start getitng annoyed that all you want to talk about is a naranja. To become obsessed is to create a filter to see that way.

It’s a healthy obsession. We all become obsessed. I don’t think you can make things without an obsession.

You find something that keeps coming back and that’s your obsession. It’s an ongoing thing, but one thing is clearer than the others. The deeper you go into it, the more you raise the obsesison and then the closer you get to something that is meaningful to you, you just have to keep at it. I don’t know what direct correlation exists between the first paintings I made and the work I make now. I can’t trace a connection when I look at the progression, but I don’t know if it’s clear to everyone. There’s no one way to do anything. There’s something in it that is very much you, your obsession is there somewhere.

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Images

1 Objetos Extraviados 2011 Installation, Mixed Media

2 GULLIVER 2009 Installation, Mixed Media

3 GULLIVER 2009 Installation, Mixed Media

4 GULLIVER 2009 Installation, Mixed Media

5 Blue Boy 2008 Installation, Mixed Media

6 Blue Boy 2008 Installation, Mixed Media

7 Objetos Extraviados 2011 Installation, Mixed Media

All works and words byClaudia Peña Salinas

claudiapenasalinas.com

Interview and layout byLaura Sofía Pérez

2012