Eugenioampudia

For the past fifteen years Eugenio Ampudia has explored the opportunities Digital Art provides. Ampudia is hard to pin down as an artist because he works across a wide range of disciplines. “I define myself,” he writes, “as an artist interested in processes and in strategies and not as a digital artist.” He has staged performances and other forms of interactions or interventions involving the spectators who become knowing or unknowing participants in projects such as Interlocutores válidos (True Interlocutors, 2001), a project that makes use of the possibilities in a heap of flour poured onto the floor and a video projection of footprints of people seemingly walking through the flour. Other works such as Picasso (no date) make use of the manipulations of a portrait of Picasso that occur when one “runs the mouse over” the image on a computer connected to the Internet. Pablo Picasso’s famous eyes track the cursor, his brow wrinkles, and his nose twitches.
The principle behind his work underscores some of Ampudia’s main concerns as an artist working on the frontiers of this new media. First, there is no actual, unique “art object” produced. Picasso only exists on the net. It has an unlimited distribution factor—in terms of its accessibility—yet cannot be purchased or held in one’s hand. Second, his art is interactive and only comes to life when someone accesses it through the Internet. In a sense it exists completely outside of the world of traditional art. There is nothing to buy or sell, but there is something to experience aesthetically. That in itself is a radical critique of art par with the unveiling of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) where he declared a urinal to be a work of art by asserting that it was.

Another video, Estadio (Stadium, 2002), shows two stylized runners chasing each other in a sprint to the finish between two arch rivals. Across their moving limbs are various art terms written in a fluid, Pop-Art style script popular in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. The first one seems to be the artist; the second, with a question mark for his head, seems to be considering whether to criticize or collect the art. En juego (In Play, 2006) shows more of Ampudia’s sense of humor as well as a certain political dimension. This three-minute video loop presents re-purposed films from an epic soccer match between Germany and Brazil during the 2002 World Cup. Replacing the ball, however, is a copy of the highly influential book of art criticism, The Shock of the New, by Robert Hughes. The soccer players, like Ampudia, are literally kicking around ideas and critical notions about art. A question might be posed: is this a struggle for artistic domination between the “New World”—in the form of Brazil—and the “Old World”—represented by Germany? Ampudia doesn’t give any answers.

Two more pieces explore the mythologies and myth makers of the art world. Chamán (Shaman, 2006) and Prado GP (2008) poke fun at the legendary artist Joseph Beuys and take potshots at the most famous museum in Spain, the Prado. A video installation, Chamán projects well-known footage of the artist in his signature hat and vest striding resolutely towards the viewer. The image is projected onto a fine spray of mist that serves as a projection screen. Beuys, perhaps the most influential artist after Duchamp, appears to shimmer as he approaches. Yet at the same time, due to the vagaries of the water spray, he seems to dissolve back into uncertainty or into “the mists of time.” Prado GP shows a racing motorcyclist aboard his GP bike superimposed on a video of a walk-through of the Prado. The bike dips and swerves through the museum’s passages. It zooms past tourists and famous paintings alike. Is this a comment on the way we often rush through museums, or is Ampudia playing with the notion of the museum as both a reliquary for famous Old Masters and the highpoint of creating official taste? Ampudia does not supply an answer. He merely asks the questions.

Ampudia has set standards for looking at the possibilities embodied in Digital Art. His critiques of representation and distribution across the art world are as humorous as they are poignant. The Internet enables both interactivity across the range of disciplines and dissolves the borders between the artist and the consumer-spectator. We are all artists now. Our time is now. When asked to state his philosophy of life, he stated simply: “We should enjoy the moment.”