Pablo Ruiz Ortiz, a Spanish artist, was born in Santander in 1974.
Pablo Ruiz Ortiz’s work develops photography inside a sculpture (a cube), 3D. It is a complex work that shows the content and the argument. The artist’s influence directed by the brand of a multinational companies that he works for.
In his early twenties, he began to take photos for documenting his life. He realized at that time; Photography could be his artistic narration tool. His interest in photography started with analog photography and its black and white development. Over time it was taking on greater relevance. Letting himself be carried away by great masters such as Jorge Represa, with whom he studied and analyzed for four years the work of the most representative authors in the history of classical photography at the Santander school (LA RECÁMARA). Pablo Ruiz Ortiz continued his training in schools like CFC (Bilbao). He attended workshops and seminars with Alberto García-Alix, Ricky Dávila, Nacho Gabrielli, Iñaki Domingo, Horacio Fernández and Jesús Micó. In 201,5 He began his studies of contemporary photography by the hand of the teacher Julián Barón at the school of Madrid BLANK PAPER, together with his collaborators Eloy Gimeno, Gonzalo Golpe, Javier Ortiz Echagüe and Lidón Forest. Pablo Ruiz Ortiz is currently studying philosophy at the University of Cantabria, investigating the relationships and influences of the world of art and image on the sociopolitical behavior of human beings in the world. Interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj.
Photo courtesy Pablo Ruiz Ortiz©
What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?
Fortunately, I have enjoyed seeing outstanding artists, also people who know how to transmit and decode works of art. I have learned from great teachers in various schools (both traditional and contemporary photography). However, I think that artists do not obtain their skills and disciplines from academic education. The training is necessary, but you have to go beyond that, at some point, to face your life. The truth is within yourself, but looking inside your guts is never easy. Today I review photography lessons from the past and remember words that only now make sense. Paul Strand wrote: "Above all, look at the things around you, your immediate world. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography and know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaning." Several people helped me watch, feel, get excited, and live. The school that I love? It is my family. Nevertheless, in the academic world, I can say that Julián Barón has been, and remains to be, my Paúl Strand.
How did you start making art?
When I was a teenager, I began to ask myself serious questions, and since then, I continue looking for answers through art, music, and poetry; but when I focused on photography, I've had a turning point. The first time in my life that I found the emptiness due to the loss of a loved one was when I was 16 years old. I became anxious. My memories were fading. A person who stopped existing, my nostalgia could not be fully satisfied with the lack of images of that person. I had to start photographing family, friends, my city, and the surrounding to forget about my loss. At the age of 18, I installed a darkroom in my house with a black and white enlarger. Thus began this adventure.
You artwork merge photography with sculpture, how do you successfully mix these two different expressions in only one work?
They combine the work that appeared during various stages in time. The success of their combination is the need for interdependence, like human specie, which always needs to share to coexist. Art is never self-sufficient. Creativity requires the artist to create, the viewer to admire, to prevail over time. In this way, whatever art may be, thus, it will feed another artist again, learning to flow.
Photo courtesy Pablo Ruiz Ortiz©
What do you see as the strengths of your pieces, visually or conceptually?
From the beginning, I intended to launch an idea: "We are the victims of a hidden war." To develop it, I have found support in the work of three authors: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan 1651), Friedrich Schiller (Letters On the Aesthetical Education of Man 1795), and Mario Montalbetti (Boxes 2012). Although I have tried to run away from it, I think that classical photography has a tremendous compositional influence on the aesthetics of my work. This conflict that arises from the development of a conceptual work that, in turn, includes classic photographs, reminds me of the conflict that resulted in avant-garde art in Europe from the 1940s onwards, in speeches so interesting as "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction "and confronted thinkers like Walter Benjamin Vs. Theodor Adorno on the subject of which characteristic (concept or beauty) should prevail in modern world works of art. I think that both are important and that there is no reason to give up either of them.
You have a multinational professional background where branding is Capital. How does your career influence your artistic production? Could you tell our readers about your creation process?
I could write a book about this question. I am working in this multinational for 21 years, and I have been through a long process of professional and emotional learning. Five years ago, I began to create Egosystems to somehow understand and accept this capital influence on me. I needed this therapy that would serve me as an escape route. With the best intentions, maybe one day, I can turn this question to how did my artistic production influence my career?
Photo courtesy Pablo Ruiz Ortiz©
Regarding the creative process, I have gone through several stages. At the beginning the project was more ambitious, I wanted to cover more topics, and influences that shaped the development the human being (depending on the geographical point where it is born and grows, the climate of the territory, the education it receives, etc.) I was creating other models and receiving feedback. I realized that when I tried to talk about many concepts, the final speech was not understood, so I narrowed down its theme. My present work is the result that I have reached over the years, but I keep with great fondness my previous works. Egosystems may, in the future, have some other chapters.
Does your art deal with the actual socio-economical situation? Do you confront politics issue in your complex 3D sculptural-photography?
That's right. It deals with how the particular interest of a known multinational degrades the relations of its workers and depresses the social egosystem that carries it. The so-called globalization focuses on spreading in a subversive didactic way a "well-directed fear" that gives rise to emotional competition. This is my own daily LEVIATHAN, which Hobbes so well described in 1651: "It is not irrational to prefer the destruction of the world that to injure my finger." I think most of us, if we reflect on it, is to a greater or lesser extent, under the domain of BRANDS.
In our most outside spaces, outside of our jobs, the same intentions and influences of the big BRANDS occur. They are repeated over and over to dominate over governments. To get to draw a grid over our "reason" (that's why I use the continuous symbolism of the square format and the geometry of the cube in my work), inhibit the "most sensitive" and natural impulse conditioning our emotions through ADVERTISING. A resource that was developed to manifest from the less wealthy social classes to their rulers and priority demands. It has been invested by power, which has appropriated it as the most powerful weapon to influence our psyche, using it as subtly over the years as ruthlessly in its intention to objectify us. The word fascism comes from "fascination". Advertising through the image and specific aesthetics is the method that all governments use to manage societies through the mass media regardless of the model of social contract they use. So artists who use images and photography have to create a new way to launch different messages than those in the mass media.
"The impulse of the GAME" is a crucial part of your work. Please tell us more about it.
In 1795, Friedrich Schiller wrote "Letters On The Aesthetical Education Of Man." He describes that the human being is endowed by nature with two impulses (TRIEB). He named the first of them SENSITIVE, and it results from the material existence of man or his sensitive nature. He called the second impulse FORMAL, which contains within itself all the formal qualities of things and all their relations with thought. Schiller argued that these two drives could be balanced by a third, "The Impulse of the Game," through which beauty links the two opposing stages of "feeling" and "thinking."
Photo courtesy Pablo Ruiz Ortiz©
One of the essential parts of Egosystems is that, while "playing" with this BOX, people discover the balance that is necessary to find their humanity and feeling free. This is what I hope will arise in those who play while being aware of these situations. All this, as Friedrich Schiller said, can only be discovered through a third impulse called "The impulse of the GAME," by finding beauty through education, and being art, the only tool to access it.
Today, the world is facing the pandemic COVID-19. As Spanish lockdown artist under Coronavirus quarantine, What is a typical day like for you? How do you continue doing your art under these circumstances?
It is an irritating situation that the world is facing. Just yesterday, I heard on a TV news program a comparison between the current situation of COVID-19 and the myth of Pandora's Box. The conclusion they sought was to encourage the population by saying "hope is the last thing you lose", because hope is the only thing that Pandora could contain when she closed the box ... So I wonder: if Pandora's Box included all the evils of the world, is hope an ethically good concept? Perhaps you do not have to wait for anything to live calmly, because if you expect something, then it is not achieved, despair will appear. Extremes are not good. Neither altruism nor egoism. Solidarity is at the midpoint. And one more thing, why don't they look for Zeus in all this story? I think Egosystems can help us solve this puzzle.
I now spend my days resting, reviewing ideas, and trying to project new essays. Also, I was looking forward to this interview, which could ́t have arrived at a better time.
What else are you working on at the moment? Next projects?
I currently have two projects in progress: one of them is still in its initial phase. It deals with the action of man on the environment, more specifically on the sea. The other is somewhat more advanced. It is a more personal project that talks about the relationship between a man and the outside world through art. It is titled "An island in my room". I hope someday to have the opportunity to show it.
What other interests do you have outside of art?
I like music, movies and also usually go to the theater. I attempt to discover other cultures and travel whenever I have free time during the holidays. I have also been studying a degree in philosophy for a while. I am 45 years old, but I think that it is never too late. Contact with nature and going out to have fun with friends are also essential for me too.
Pablo, Share something you would like the world to know about you?
I would just like to remind artists of a message from Schiller, again, so that each one will believe in their truth. "Live with your century, but don't be its creature, Work for your contemporaries, but create what they need, not what they praise."
A big hug to the Al-Tiba9 community.
