Pablo, an artist that will leave you amazed with incredible sound and visual creativity, an artistic journey to incredible dimensions, experiencing sensations. I invite you to learn more about this Venezuelan artist.
Who is Pablo Peña?
This is a difficult question to which I’m still looking for an answer, but not to get too philosophical I can say that I’m just a person who seeks to manifest himself in the best way he can, doing what he likes.
What was your first encounter with art?
Since I was a child my parents made sure that my sister and I were always exposed to art, I am from Guanare and although it is a small town it is very rich culturally, but I have a very special memory of a time when my parents took us to Caracas to see Parque Central and the whole museum area, I was impressed, I have always had a fascination for things that look good and find out what they mean or what I can interpret.
What prompted you to choose the path of visual art?
It wasn’t until a couple of years into my Mathematics and Electronic Engineering career that I decided to change everything I was doing to study Arts, since I was a kid I had been in painting classes and other activities, but I had never seen myself as an artistic person, until then my thing was computers, But it was the same environment of the university and Merida, where I went to study, that revealed to me that I needed to externalize much of what I felt and I saw in the change of career a more direct way to do it, at that time it seemed a very drastic turn, but now I see it as a natural evolution, mathematics is still part of what I do every day.
What are the tools you use in your creative process?
Very early in my art career I started working with technology, which brought me a lot of problems in a faculty with a more traditional view of what artistic practice was, and over the years my tools are changing as technologies are advancing, but I can say that they have always been related to 3D animation and programming.
Currently my main graphic tool is Houdini, a software mainly used for developing special effects for movies, but with an incredible versatility, there I have been able to merge the aspects of 3D with programming, practically everything I can do from there.
I also use Unreal Engine, a rendering engine for video games, which allows me to make real time renders of what I create in Houdini, and is a very good tool for live presentations and installations, also as a way to connect the virtual world with the outside.
Another tool I use the most is VCV Rack, a modular synthesis software, I’m more and more interested in mixing visuals with sound, and connecting all these tools and making them talk to each other.
Do you belong to an artistic crew or group?
We are forming something related to the audiovisual in Mexico City, where I live, but still nothing concrete, since I was in college I have not been in a collective and I need that kind of interaction, although I have been in many collaborations.
What has been your favorite project in which you have participated?
My favorite project is always the last one I have done, now I can say that it is a collaboration with Remedios, a very talented Colombian artist, it is a collection of generative art pieces that fuses our styles in one work, it was launched last year as NFT and has been very well received, the project still continues and is one of the things that has given me the most satisfaction.
https://www.chrysinaunpredictable.com/
Have you had collaborations with artists outside your project?
2022 was a year of collaborations, I already talked about my project with Remedios, I was also working with the record label Facade Electronic from Tijuana in Mexico making the cover of the label’s premiere album and with Patricia Wolf, a musician from the United States with whom we made a generative art project with her music, and other collaborations that I hope to publish soon.
What would be the main objective of your work?
We are in the middle of a complex society and time, living very important transformations, wonderful things and terrible things happen at the same time and too fast to assimilate it all in a conscious way, and I think my work has to do with expressing my feelings about all this, my work is deeply personal, but I am a person with a lot of interest in the human and our path as a society, history and see the global context, and that always permeates what I do.
What artists or musical genres influence you?
I am influenced by everything, having grown up in the plains, the colors of the tropics, politics, history,
Venezuela, South America, but specifically I think I belong to a generation of artists that developed on the internet as a natural habitat and we met again in the digital art revolution and the NFT, and between all of us we have been nurturing each other with our personal experiences, Joshua Davis, Designgraphik, Michael Cina, Brendan Dawes, Beeple, Gmunk, Casey Reas, to name those who are contemporary with me.
In terms of music I move more in ambient and noise electronica, but the truth is I listen to everything, lately I’m very interested in South American and Caribbean rhythms, although what I do doesn’t sound similar there is always that influence there.
Has your work pushed you abroad?
After college most of my career as an artist and as a designer and art director has been developed abroad, I don’t know if that’s something that has helped me or not, it’s just how it has happened, I’ve been lucky and very privileged to have been able to live different experiences in different places, but being a foreigner is always more complicated.
Any upcoming projects you would like to share with us?
I am now working on merging what I do with artificial intelligence, I am using my own work to train a model and try to make a collaboration between the machine and I, see what interpretations it has of my work and how it works when trying to replicate it, for now I am only in the development stage but very excited about what can come out of this, and trying to keep up with it, technology is going faster than I can with my own research, but those are the times we live in.
Thanks to Pablo for allowing us to conduct this interview today, I invite you to follow him on his social networks and digital platforms.
Instagram: @P3P510
YouTube: P3P510
Vimeo: Pablo E. Peña P.
Behance: Pablo E. Peña P.
Twitter: @P3P510
Soundcloud: P3P510