WEBVTT

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Normally, I don't do public work,

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I don't do commissions.

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You know, the library is the National Library

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So it was like a major project.

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So they approached me, but I told them,

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"If I have an idea I like, I will do it."

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So when the building was ready, I had a couple of ideas,

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And one of these ideas was to have this skeleton of a whale in the center.

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Somehow, it was like an image, more than an idea.

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But it came to me like a very clear image

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Of this floating whale in the center of the bookshelves in the library.

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When I am dealing with a ready-made object

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Or something from reality,

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I try to understand the logic of the object,

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How it works.

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So I took some joints in the different centers of movement in the whale,

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And from those points, I start to draw circles.

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They're like rings,

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And those rings intersect,

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So you have different points in the body.

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So, from the different centers of the skeleton,

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I was drawing rings expanding,

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And they were touching in different ways,

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Surprising ways,

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Until it was really huge rings.

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At the end was a lot labor to fill it with graphite.

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And I like the graphite because its lead

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Has certain qualities that is not like painting on the bone,

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It's more like dust.

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I always liked the idea of this dark mineral

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Against the whiteness of the bone,

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How they contrast.

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If you think, in my work, as a way of taking from reality

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And then extracting something, and then revealing just one central part,

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Or the part that I'm interested in.

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It's a kind of collage.

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Getting involved with that, and remaking the structure again.

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So it still is what it is originally,

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But then is revealed in a different way.

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I mean, I know that when you do something like this

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In a big building like that one,

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The symbolism and the mythology starts to play a factor,

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And humanity has a lot of legendary tales and stories

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And mythologies in relation to the whale.

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On the other hand, normally in a building like this,

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You will do an eagle or something symbolic about Mexico or something like that,

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That they love to do in the old times, you know?

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But I think now, being more about knowledge,

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and also the building has an ecological side.

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But I think that all that is in the work

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Without me saying anything.

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I think for me, what is important is the translation

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From real experience.

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But then how you translate that experience into a sign,

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into a language, into art,

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That you can communicate your discoveries to other people.