January 23 - March 14, 2020
After graduating from the Otto Krause Technical High School as an Electrical Technician, Gustavo Díaz was awarded a three-month scholarship to work at IBM, and at eighteen, he was awarded a merit scholarship to work at the INTI, the National Industrial Technology Institute, for one year. This award was his first incursion into the “universe of science,” specifically at a lab to develop sensors for robotic applications. Inspired by this academic experience, he studied Engineering at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). During this period, he started to contemplate philosophical questions regarding his present and, in general, all of his existence; he began to slowly develop a new direction in his life and train, almost unaware of it himself, in a field intimately related to artistic research.
In the 1990s, he studied painting and sculpture at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School of Fine Arts, currently UNA, and piano and violin performance at the Manuel de Falla National Conservatory. This multidisciplinary education reflects his curious and restless nature, which has been his attitude towards artistic research, and in general, all other events in his life. The foundation was built on his initial interest in contemporary scientific thought. This was the genesis of the fundamental questions that have accompanied him all his life, although later, and in a totally imperceptible way, he chose the spiritual language of art in order to find some answers, and mainly to ask himself new questions or restate his original ones.
For 12 years he committed himself to the teaching of art, with the belief that there is an ethical responsibility to share a better vision of our reality and our perception of the world through the spiritual path of art. As a Visual Arts Professor, he taught a wide variety of courses such as: A Grammar of Vision, Analytical Drawing, Drawing, Painting, Art History, and Experimental Course based on the Bauhaus and Ulm Methodology and others. With the same motivation, he co-founded and directed for 5 years the NOUS Art and Design Center in the Municipality of Pinamar, which offered a multidisciplinary art education.
In the area of musical studies, he taught piano, violin, sax, and guitar performance, Ensemble, Music Theory and History, additionally establishing the first youth orchestra in the community where he currently resided, Pinamar, Carilo, (Province of Buenos Aires). In the Visual Arts workshop, he taught Painting, Drawing, Analysis, The Language of Art, Photography, Experimental Workshop, as well as offering countless conferences on Contemporary Architecture, Art Exhibits, and presentations for the purpose of reflecting on art as a transformational vehicle for the individual and therefore the community.
Then after 5 years of high academic intensity, motivated by what he could call “[his] being’s unstoppable centripetal tension,” he took some distance from teaching and focused his interests in alignment with what he could call “[his] artistic language.”
This period of structural reconsiderations gave rise, after years of internal searching, to the subject he has been researching for over 10 years: “the behavior of complexity,” He approached subjects such as the study of Chaos Theory, in particular issues related to Ilya Prigogine’s concept of dissipative structures, for which Pirgogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977, as well as some aspects of Rene Thom’s Theory of Catastrophes, mainly those dealing with the rupture of linearity and the emergence of “the new” through discontinuity processes. Another subject that he approached in depth in order to study the behavior of complex systems is the concept of networks, in particular those of rhizomatic origin. He is interested in hyper-complex connectivity, especially in what relates to the Theory of Systems’ grammatical aspect, particularly Grammars that are sensitive to their surroundings. He has conducted the research described above for approximately ten years, and it has been the conceptual foundation of all his activities as a professor and artist, in all his exhibitions as well as his conference presentations during this time. Retaking the theme of Forms as Symbols, he hopes these simple words will help to draw the complex cartography that represents his artistic quest: professional, intense, passionate, complex, and full of questions.
Opening: January 23, 2020 | 6–8 pm
Performance: March 14, 2020 | 11 am – 6 pm
"Between Sound and Music", Multiple performance times. RSVP to [email protected] by March 10 to attend at 11am, 3pm, or 5pm
1506 West Alabama
Houston, 77098 TX
(713) 529-1313
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