10 Questions with Teo San José
Born in Valladolid, Spain in 1958, currently develops his artistic activity between the cities of Córdoba and Denia. He studied Engineering at the Universities of Valladolid and Madrid. He began his artistic development carrying out sculptural projects linked to the popular architecture of Valladolid and developing different sculpture workshops, ceramics, and artistic applications of mechanical engineering. He is related to official and self-founded programs of art and education in Spain and Mexico.
His work develops from dialogue as an inescapable formula for the common construction of possible realities. His art vision considers the subtlety of language and the synthesis of meanings as essential characteristics for an energetic and peaceful expression at the same time. When we open our eyes, minds, and perceptions to sculpture, we enter into an intimate space, a path that leads us to the emptiness of the mind to touch our deepest being. It is not necessary to understand, only to feel the life that the work of art has. It is a profound and personal experience.
His work is present in public and private collections in Spain, France, Mexico, China, and England.
Teo San José in his studio.
My sculptural work is developed from the desire to create spaces for dialogue. It is necessary to work from the dialogue as a form to achieve an expression of serenity. The public and monumental work that I carry out has a strong intention to intervene in people ́s daily lives. In my case, the sculptures do not wait in the standard exhibition spaces; On the contrary, they are the ones that go out to meet their own place and its spectators. The great dimension sculpture allows transcending the human scale, picking up the notion of “symbol” and stimulating a physical relationship with the viewer. The viewer surrounds the work. If the reference point is variable, so is the work itself. Tension as a balance between concepts is present in all aspects of the work. The use of steel as a material exposes a weight, a solidity; curving and stylizing its forms provides lightness. In my work, matter not only shapes space; it also crosses it to compose new places. The planes are superimposed without losing their individual quality, to build dimensions that exceed them. Emptiness and matter complement each other, changing our eyes, making new interpretations, always staying in motion.
Serenity Portal
INTERVIEW
How would you define yourself as an artist?
A creator of new mental spaces where intuition and subjective thinking give an essential value. A generator of spaces for dialogue on a personal and the human collective; that ́s where the importance of the scale comes from. The monumental scale is vital to create spaces of dialogue.
What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?
There are two key points in my formation as a sculptor: the studies of Engineering, and being born and living the first years of my life in Valladolid (Spain). This is where the Castilian imagery (religious hyperrealistic sculpture from the XVI to XVIII centuries) is still present in the city life.
What experience of your life would you say that is reflected in your works of art?
My whole daily life is reflected in the sculpture. It ́s the best way I have to know my progress as a human being, radiography that is materialized in each work, and allows me to know who I am—a material meditation.
You have mentioned that when we open our eyes, our minds, and perceptions of sculpture, we enter into an intimate space. Please tell us more about the intimacy you find in sculptural art?
I started making hyperrealistic sculpture, then the time passed by, and I lived in several german cities, most of all Hamburg and Berlin, I discovered that abstract art was the one that allows me (and I also think it will enable every human being the same) to enter in the deepest of our sensations, feelings, and perceptions of the subconscious.
Dancing with fear, Steel, 0,50 x 0,35 x 0,35 m. Teo San José©
My sculptures are touchable realities, physical, and when they are monumental, they surpass us, breaking our perceptual scales. Each movement around the work of art, each day, makes way for us to a new perception. It is not usual that the mind finds places where ties are tied up; that is why other parts of our being can move and make us feel calm, serenity, and peace. This is why my works are used for meditating and reaching the most in6mate part of ourselves.
That internal dialogue is what I feel, and when a person can enter in the sculpture, to be among its corps...Woah... it is as if the earth was talking to us as if the earth welcomed us.
Your vision of art considers the subtlety of language and the synthesis of meanings as essential characteristics for an energetic and peaceful expression at the same time. Could you tell us about this creative process? How do you successfully express your intentions?
One day I discovered the power of the word, then I began to ask myself if it was in the sound, or maybe in the signs: the calligraphy. Working with the Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, I proved that when the characters turned into three dimensional, the sense and emotion of the word were transmitted but amplified that emotion and sense when manifesting through a monumental sculpture.
Wind portal study II, Steel, 0,50 x 0,42 x 0,39 m. Teo San José©
An example of this is the sculpture Portal del Vent, located at Denia's port in Alicante, Spain. It is made from the Kanji (Japanese symbol) of the word "tree." When you observe the people's reactions being around the piece, I confirmed that they act as if they were in front of an enormous centenary tree at the public square of a town. The children climbing and playing, the couples cuddling, the families relaxing at its base, the young people talking...
These signs are very antique symbols full of power, and I use them to amplify that essential message: serenity, calm, dialogue, peace. At this moment, I am working on a new series about the Arabic calligraphy, a fantastic world full of deep and enigmatic meanings.
What do you see as the strengths of your pieces, visually or conceptually?
Their structures are extremely light. Their shapes are transparent, asymmetric, indefinite. It is a synthesis of means like the pointed gothic arch, the ships' sails, the dynamism, or the movement as concepts.
A reality in constant change that guides the spectator to other worlds full of intuition and subtlety. There ́s a perceived dynamic Balance that incites to see and go around these sculptures many times and get inside them (inside oneself)—a deep act of meditation.
Can you give an example of an artwork that you have made that you feel especially successful?
The Serenity Portal, twelve meters high, is located in México.
Serenity Portal, Steel, 12 x 7 x 6 m, 2013 | Location Zibata. Querétaro. México | Commission by DRT construction company, Querétaro, México. Teo San José©
I am also proud of Portal del Vent, almost eight meters high, located in Denia, Spain.
and Air of Fire, more than five meters high, located in Bourdeaux, France, just a few months ago.
Air of Fire
How do you see the project evolving in the next five years?
This is a moment of hatching. I see, for the next years, many monumental sculptures around the world. I mean, creating these spaces for the dialogue and the peace, with many cultural contexts being part of them. We need symbols to talk to us, transmit, and contribute to these deep values. I think that this type of work of art can make it happen.
Any shows, galleries, or publications where our readers can find your work?
You can see my work on different platforms. We have a website www.teosanjose.com, and I have a blog too. You can find out some more aspects of the way I think and work. You can also find me at Singulart, Saachi Art, and other webs. We are using platforms like my Instagram, which is a very dynamic way of meeting artists, clients, galleries, and fans.
Teo. San José, Share something you would like the world to know about you?
These sculptures don ́t appear from my mind. They flow from a meditation state, calm, and serenity. I feel so lucky of being nothing more but a small canal through which they materialize.
DYNAMIC BALANCE
THE SCULPTURE AND THE WRITTEN WORD
For many years, my work as a sculptor moves in a context where written word and calligraphy became the "leitmotiv" of my art. Over time I could check the intense relationship between the concept of "word" and the symbol representing it: the letter.
This took me to transport those symbols into the three dimensions and prove how the letter's energy was intensified once it was converted into a monumental sculpture. That was how were born some sculptures as:
Serenity Portal, 12m high.
Portal del Vent, 7,5m high.
Portal of Confidence, 3m high.
Air of fire, 5,3m high.
In all these works, we find how the letters' strokes have been transformed and created spaces with their own identity in each installation location.
It was the Chinese-Japanese alphabet, the first that I used. Later, when I discovered the writing cultures or "people of the book" (Ahl Al Kitab), it was the calligraphy and Islamic art those who caught my attention. The letters of this culture inspired and gave life to the recent sculptures, as the series that we present here, named: Dynamic Balance.
Dynamic Balance, a new way:
Nowadays, we find many concepts that had governed our lives, totally or partially, centered on an idea that corresponds to static balance. That is, we found ourselves well knowing that nothing can change, that our patterns are something immovable, as if those principles that we had been acquiring throughout our life or learning always had to be attached to us or we were anchored in them.
Perhaps it is time to consider another type of balance, another way of seeing or understanding life, or ourselves, choosing a Dynamic Balance.
This new work series means an invitation to bet on an inner and outer balance that allows us to move and take action even if it is not exactly towards our objective. A balance that allows us to open our minds or ears to try to get to know our interlocutor more, to speak with people for the sharing their lives, ideas, emotions, not only to see what benefit I can get from them or how I can convince them to achieve my goal. That is dialogue.
A symbol for unity:
When we set out to build the first monumental sculpture in the program "International net of public spaces for the dialogue through art", its design was the objective of transmitting the concept of "unity" of connecting all the people worldwide art and advanced technology. Dialogue is an instrument to get a synthesis of truth.
For its design, we studied the contributions that could make different cultures and phylosophies: Islam, Asian philosophy with digital technology, and the element of water. We took the letter ( س ) "Shin" of Islam as a symbol of unity. We find its three-dimension in the mosaics: Al Hamra, Nasrí of XIV century. Then we achieved interactive sculpture design, with a part of steel (15x10x6 m), another part in digital (15x10x6 m), and the reflection on the water giving us the sensation of a sferic monumental sculpture.
This enormous space will work as a giant screen of projection for art videos about dialogue in different cultures. In the future, we will be able to have many sculptures of this type in cities worldwide, creating this feeling of "unity." You can see in the images and video we send the model we presented for Córdoba, in Spain, a project supported by the Halal Institute and de Islamic Board.
The sculptor is not the important thing,
the sculpture is.
The sculpture is not the important thing,
but the letter.
The letter is not important,
but its power.
Its power is not important,
but who gives it.
It is given by unity.
Unity between shape, emotion, sense,
space and time;
infinite variables that get us, once and another time,
to the feeling of a reality that comes presence.
All is Unity.
Nothing is Unity.
Unity is reality.
