Casa Bonita

Upon hearing the movements of Historia del futuro pasado, Visual artist, Marcos Salazar began to develop a new theory of morphology for his sculptures, conceiving them as a sounding board for an inner music. “I was passionately interested in the idea of a joint piece in which the music flowed from within us: it was the way to accomplish a work that held its own music inside and resonated within the body. I tied that research in with my knowledge concerning the origins of musical instruments as a human invention, to produce sounds that could not be identified with the sounds of nature, but with the sounds from inside the human body. The inner music of the stone paved the way for me to explore that acoustic, almost unknown world, and undertake a contemplative return to our original nature. That was where our work began, and I decided on the Patio because it is the ‘heart of the house,’ the ‘core.’

The environment was created by a large artificial crystal surrounded by painted walls that violently erupted from the center, creating a situation in the placid Patio, now permanently punctuated by a future event. This huge, looming shape, a sort of menhir, is made up of the helicoidal rhythm that forced it up, and is governed by the scale of its development, faithfully following the Fibonacci numbers. Here we have perfect fusion of Eduardo Marturet’s dense music and the huge crystal used as a new diapason of the music that the artist finds in its interior.

The painted walls set the boundary of the Sound Domus, where –with great simulation– a huge wall is reproduced: standing out is the tall profile of Mount Ávila in summer, placing the figuration at a specific geographical point. The guardian mountain is arranged around the coordinates of the hall that correspond to reality so as to emphasize, for the first time, the location of Casa Bonita: in Caracas, in the heart of Venezuela.

Marcos Salazar speaks of his experience and involvement in the project in a very intimate, almost mystical way: “The first time that Eduardo Marturet visited my atelier he found me polishing a small crystal in tones of pink with a granite carving inside. He watched me in silence for almost an hour, during which time we only exchanged a few impressions for short intervals. When I finished, he asked me for the crystal and spoke to me of the project, of the integration of the music, his ideas… I was interested right away because I have always been interested in sound as a proposal. Eduardo took the crystal, placed it in a fishbowl, and a week later handed me the first pieces of what would be our ambience. It was the composition of what our environment would be. It was a composition that musically described, in a surprisingly true and stimulating manner, what the sound inside the stone, the crystal, meant to me. It was the music from the bowels of the rock. I was impressed by the force of it and I connected it with my own research into the inner sounds of our own bodies with that amazing music that narrated the inner sound of the stone. That opened the door to new possibilities in my own work: now I did not just investigate the formal aspects of sculpture, using transparency or the landscapes that run through it, but brought in the acoustic aspect also. I had never thought of doing something making conscious use of the Fibonacci numbers, but I don’t feel that is essential as a prior theoretical coincidence for a project such as this, where the essence is the intuitive empathy and the common resonance in the creation.

The likenesses and connections between La historia futuro pasado and my work are not only due to these technical, mathematical or formal aspects, but rather to the search for an original, mystical sound. That is why I tried to anthropomorphize the crystal, endow the stone with the characteristics of a ‘living creature’; for that reason also, the most important thing is that song of origins, that song of ritual voices rises from the very bowels of the crystal….”

Visual Artist: Marcos Salazar
Visual Artist: Marcos Salazar

LA HISTORIA DEL FUTURO PASADO

8 hours of mixed media
Click on the streaming audio links below to sample.