As an artist, I try to challenge our everyday perceptions by offering new images that reinterpret our visual world. My art experiments with alchemical processes in search of what I call “transmuted spaces,” places where energy can shift, change, or renew itself. From the chemistry of water reacting with minerals to a magic that I believe reaches beyond science, I work to reveal how opposing elements interact, transform, or propel each other. Each layer that is formed, each object introduced, is intuitive—a choreographed ritual that embodies the meditative state.
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In my series PERMUTATION, I use salt, mineral, water and fire to create pools of entropic verdigris, a process that conjures layered textures of color and space, based on movement and evaporation. Accumulation of the medium as it diffuses and transmutes onto the surface becomes a kind of topography, showing the passage of time. Each layer explores the equilibrium between what is intended and what is achieved; a process that neither controls these forces, nor surrenders to them, but rather from immersion in them. I make a work in order to raze it, to see what lies beneath or behind, to investigate the shadow surface. What is revealed comes through an often tumultuous dialogue of transformative alchemical forces that create a new form.
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My series DIFFUSION explores paint as a sculptural object. Using a process in which the medium diffuses into the surface, I create compositions of accumulation, conjuring layered textures of color and space. Beginning with a biomorphic shape or a color that embodies an elemental archetype, these ‘formations’ unfold in a natural rhythm of their own. As the material diffuses each layer informs the previous layer, creating a dialog between the hand of the artist and the material itself. My art attempts to engage the audience with imagery that is visceral and raw. I hope to spark connection with nature and through process and alchemy, create a visual form that liberates both an intimate as well as an unknown aspect of the cosmos.
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In my IMMERSION installation series I introduce materials that experiment with alchemical processes in the pursuit of discovering a “third space,” a zone of possibility that exists beyond restrictive dualities. The scope of each project engages the body as an integral element within an installation to capture a physical and psychic topography. I use the square as a construct for the natural, employing it as metaphor for the membrane or conduit between forms that initially appear separate but are connected. By creating entropic environments I delve into aspects of human nature and direct somatic experience… I activate a space with a raw sense of what it means to be alive.
Artist’s video
https://www.youtube.com/c/TobiasTovera?gvnc=1
https://vimeo.com/tobiastovera
