Eltono
Maybe it sounds like a fan talking but truth is one of the reasons why Subaquatica exists is Eltono’s work. The (then) quiet revolution that was taking place, since the beginning of the 90’s, in the world of art in the streets would have been hardly noticeable in this town, Madrid, without the appearance of those plain-colored strange shapes around the centric neighbourhoods of Lavapies or Malasaña. And as irrelevant as it might be without it I probably wouldn’t have started thinking about art in the streets again, this time under a new perspective, after many years of continuous and increasing lack of interest for Hip Hop culture and “traditional” Graffiti. And Subaquatica would most probably not exist or would be a whole different thing. Of course there are some other street artists in Madrid, some of them with talent or at least with a great attitude. But if there’s one local artist that, because of his coherent discourse, of his original approach and his experience in the field, has earned a international status in the Street art scene, that’s precisely Eltono. It’s impossible to evaluate and understand his work without taking into account his female sidekick, Nuria, of whom we’ll also talk in this interview, but today it will be Tono that will be answering some questions.
First, a question we ask all artists we interview: When, Where, How and why did you start doing art on the street?
I started doing Graffiti, letters Graffiti, in 1989 around the northwest of Paris. More or less in 1992-93 I started using the name Otone and became part of the GAP crew that Zepha, Wope and Desa had just created. I used to paint railway side walls, highways and trains until I moved to Madrid in 1999. Right after arriving here I changed my name and added the spanish “El” so it became Eltono to make it more local. My first six months in Spain I used stickers, tags and systematically bombed with black and silver pieces in the most visible and strategically located places: the rail sides around Chamartín, Atocha and Príncipe Pío train stations, line 10 of the subway between Batán and Aluche, Gran vía avenue, the M30 highway… While at a Hip Hop Jam in Fuenlabrada, I met some writers from the southern area of Madrid and started going out to bomb sundays and also often during the week around the M30 and also often during the week around the M30 with the Ifo and also some subway “missions”. I used to study Arts at Saint Denis back in France and had some schoolmates that had experience with Graffiti and were also evolving as writers-artists such as Olivier Stak, So6 or François Morel. In 1997, while still doing letter-Graffiti I started also to do series of stickers with the GAP crew and invade Paris with them and we quickly moved on to posters and so on. Later in Spain I would follow the evolution of my friends in Paris and that led me to push forward my own work too. It was precisely in downtown Madrid and how saturated it was with tags that I felt I had to modify my approach and avoid being the guy doing just one more tag among many others, almost invisible to everyone. So I changed the technique and the spraycan for the plastic paint and the masking tape. The mental process that led me to use a icon in the form of a tuning fork, that you use to tune musical instruments, was simple: My name was “Eltono” (The tone in Spanish) and that was a graphic representation of my name. This form is simply a starting point, a graphic departure base where I’ve been evolving since then.
In one given moment you adopted that form, that icon, as your trademark and since then and because of your evolution, maybe you are conditioned and limited by that icon because everyone that knows about you and about your work and identify you with it.
Not at all. The icon is the basic form that I use to express myself on the streets doing Graffiti. But I work in projects where the icon doesn’t even appears such as the “Sonic Graffitis” that Nuria and myself presented at the Fundación Once Art Biennial. Besides I explore other ways of expression, always with the street as the landscape, such as posters, stickers, projections…
I’ve always thought that both Nuria and you are an example of coherence when taking your work to art centers, shows and galleries but I would like you to explain briefly what’s your approach in those cases.
It’s simply being faithful to the work we do on the streets, that’s where we come from. We always try to make the “interior” work relate to the “exterior” one, whether they document or complement it, or it’s done with elements taken from the streets… A work like ours, where the medium has such a relevance it’s not so easy to bring the outside to the inside medium and context. Besides, we don’t like working on a white canvas. Our work would loose all its meaning. One solution is to work with the documentation of the work previously done on the streets: pictures, videos, watercolors… but always with a relationship with something that actually exists outside.
Precisely, and about the use you make of video and photography to show and document your street work, it seems like it’s something you are doing more and more every time. Could you explain how and why?
I think that documenting it is the best way to show my work in closed places. You rarely find the adequate medium in spaces with plain white walls. I’m mostly interested in the reactions of ordinary people when the find one of my pieces unexpectedly. In closed spaces I’m not interested in recreating that reaction because it would be a false one. I think the best way to go is document it in a way that I make people want to go outside and watch more carefully when they walk around the city and in the best of cases, to make them have them experience a true encounter with one of those unexpected pieces.
I think that a great part of the interest that your work originates comes from the conceptual and even ideological substratum that holds it together. This allows you to not being restricted by one particular discipline or technique but, to what extent is the technique relevant to you?
I approach every new work looking at it’s concept first. The technique is not very important if it’s painting, video, photography, sculpture… I simply choose the tool that fits the development of that concept the best. The most interesting idea to me is to offer free art for everyone, including an audience not necessarily ready for it. And just the other way around, it’s also interesting make the public in art galleries enjoy art in the streets. That exchange between two world seems socially very interesting and we always try to work around that concept.
That approach that you use for art centers, museums… works perfectly when you have to showcase your work but when it’s a show for an art gallery, do you it’s a bigger challenge to also make this show something that can be sold? What do you do in these cases?
With our gallery the idea is selling projects, installations or mural paintings. Also the documentation can be sold or we can also work things out as in our first show in Vacio9, “Complémentaires” where we exhibited fragments of “outside” pieces that we had done around the city. For the “x, y, z” show the lacquered wood sculptures of the “politonos” were on sale. These were reproductions, as a testimony, of the installations I had done in the streets with similar sculptures, but made of cardboard, that I would leave on the street and ended up destroyed or simply disappeared. For “Tras la pared target=”_blank”” I worked with photographs documenting the street work and woods found on the streets around the concept of hollowness and underlying the difficult of bringing my work to closed spaces.
Eltono y Nuria: “Complémentaires”
Eltono en “Tras la pared” (colective show)
Eltono y Nuria: “x, y, z”
You have mentioned frequently in the past that the overload of different ads and commercial icons in our everyday urban environment os one of the situations that your work addresses to. But our surroundings are full of other elements such as tags, throw-ups… and it seems to be a ever-changing scenario: How do you adapt your work to this situation?
The difference between my work and a throw-up or a tag is that I’m not interested in occupying the whole space where the piece is located. I try to blend in there and play with the medium’s trying to improve it somehow. With my work the space that I choose goes first and then the intervention so I work composing with the elements that surround the piece. A tag or a throw-up doesn’t usually respect the place and simply covers it to be the main visual element there. I imagine that this is why my work is usually better accepted by the general public than “traditional” Graffiti.
I imagine that the evolution that your work goes through is not only a response to those changes but also with a personal evolution. How can you describe the evolution since you first started?
Visually I’m used to slow and subtle changes that probably no one but myself notices. Many influences come from my trips. For instance in our first trip to Brazil in 2004 we arrived during the campaign for some elections and I was really impressed by the murals the different candidates use to campaign, painted in two or three colors and plastic paint. My biggest source of inspiration however comes from the street itself. I observe things very carefully. I love the spontaneous forms of street marketing or communication and for instance, that’s where my “Pinto gratis” (I paint for free) or the “Servicio 24h” (24h service) stickers came from, imitating the ones locksmiths use around here to advertise.
In your work you claim not only the street in general but the choice of spaces you make for your pieces. This way you have mentioned that you bring attention to beautiful but deteriorated spaces and that you precisely give them new value with your piece. Some people might find that a contradiction, painting on already deteriorated places. How do you explain that?
I always paint on these spaces with a whole lot of respect, adapting my work to the lines that define the medium and composing with them. Like I said, I don’t try to cover the space but to integrate and thus underly the details, such as textures, typographies… It’s a way of giving those places a new life after they have become useless.
As the city changes there are less and less of those spaces that you mention. How do you plan to continue your works as these spaces continue to disappear?
I’ll have to continue to adapt. It’s clear that downtown Madrid is nowadays nothing like it was back in 99 and it’s became harder to find abandoned spaces because of the old buildings renovations and therefore it’s harder to find the kind of spaces that I like. But as these disappear new spaces will come up and there’s a lot of nice older places to paint in other cities in different countries. I just have to go get them!
There this taboo when it comes to successful and famous artists that come from doing street work when the subject of their continuity as “real” writers or street-artists remains. I think that in your case, you actually need to keep on doing your pieces because it’s necessary for your “inside” work. Am I right?
It’s simply what I enjoy the most. It really feels great to do an illegal piece at night. My work simply doesn’t make any sense without the exterior component. When it works best is when someone finds one of my pieces around the corner and after that start finding more and more and ends up looking for then.
One of the elements that I guess that affects your work the most is the fact that you found a partner not only for your own private life but for your work that has developed a parallel style that complements yours. Sometimes you work as a collective and sometimes you work as solo artists. How has she affected your work and how do you affect hers?
We both work in a different way but around a same concept and we both influence each other. Besides our work methodology are different but complementary and I believe that we form a good team.
Nuria y Eltono
Although you follow the same conceptual approach and a similar aesthetic one, even when you work as a team you can tell who did what and at the same time it’s obvious that there’s a previous plan that you have probably designed together. How do you distribute your work and how is your work different when you work with Nuria compared to when you work alone?
It’s usually for the street work when each one of us shows its most personal work and when we have a project coming up for a closed space, we work more as a team. The main distinction in this cases is that each one has its own icon but when the work is more conceptual we usually sign not with our icons but with our names and as a team.
Back to those projects for art centers and so on, it seems like in those you are constantly referring to the street as the natural habitat for your work but all these shows and projects, do they also influence your street work?
Sure it does, it’s just logical. Techniques that are used for interior spaces can later be tested for the exterior work and vice-versa.
Also, what importance do you give to the creative process itself? Is it important for the result and mostly to yourself or is it something you want to share with the spectator?
The process has its importance because when you do something that it’s illegal, different things always happen. We have lots of anecdotes from when we’ve gone painting. What’s most interesting is how it affects the result making it something with a out-of-control element and also is very interesting how the piece evolves with rust, dirt, posters put on top of it, re-painting, new stuff that appears right next to it… We also try to document that evolution.
What have you been doing lately?
Right now we are preparing work for a show of contemporary painting at the MARCO (Museo de Arte contemporáneo de Vigo/ Vigo Museum of Contemporary Art) in September and another show at the Cruce space in en Madrid that opens 16th June. Also, our book, published by Rojo is about to be released.
Any plans for the future that you can tell us about?
Travel more and paint in new places. Keep on taking our art to places where there’s usually little art such as when we were painting at the Gardenia Azul favela in Rio de Janeiro.
Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?
This year we were able to do of the things we had been wanting to do for some time: Paint in Tokyo and paint in a favela in Brazil. We still have to paint Las Barranquillas! And I’ve always wanted to paint in the old streets in La Habana, Cuba.
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting in general?
El Equipo plástico.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
El Equipo plastico is a secret organization. No more details.
Links:
www.eltono.com
www.fotolog.com/eltono
June 1st, 2006 09:55am Administrador
