Pedro Morales
b. 1958, Maracaibo.
Lives and works in Versailles, France.
Pedro Morales (Maracaibo, VE. 1958) is a pioneer of digital art in Venezuela. “La Mirada,” (The Gaze), ca. 1989, made entirely in a 8088 PC with 256K RAM memory is one of the first works of digital art documented in the region. Ever since, expressing the warmth of the heart and the inner landscape in his artwork became part of the challenge of pushing the aesthetic limits of what was just starting to be known as “virtual reality.”
Morales was honored with Salon Arturo Michelena’s Arts Research Award in 1991.. His work has been in individual exhibits at the Sofia Imber Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas, he participates in the First Pirelli Exhibition of Young Artists 1993 and his piece “Generacion Fractal” (Fractal Generation) (1994) received the FAMA Award, granted by the fund for arts sponsored by Fundación Polar, and the Grand Prize in the 20th Art Show of Aragua (1995). The Museums of Contemporary Art of Maracay and Maracaibo both exhibited his Naturaleza Virtual (Virtual Nature) (1997). He has participated in Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (2002, 2005).
Morales represented Venezuela in the 50th Venice Biennale exhibition “The Dictatorship of the Viewer” (2003) with his iconic work “City Rooms,” one of the first artistic creations made on and for the internet. Censured by the government of his country, it was still viewed (navigated) by thousands of people online. City Rooms is a high point in his career and a landmark for Venezuelan contemporary art.
For more than two decades, Morales’ research in visual arts has maintained an intimate focus, using everyday household events as background for his digital work. He turns to fractal geometry to exhibit his mosaics, the home he means to portray, using the beauty arduously taken by the artist from technology.
Pedro Morales has explored his vision of the picture within the picture using stereography, his virtual volumes, free from wires and screens and yet loyal to their digital nature. His exhibit Bordados Porno (Porn Embroideries, 2007) was the result of a long creative seclusion that led him to approach tri-dimensionality on the plane. 3D vision, a recent fashion, has been widely researched and documented by Morales since the late nineties.
Bi-dimensional codes (QR and HCCB), now popular in mobile telephones and printed ads, have been dismembered and reassembled with paper and leather flowers and pieces of plastic on raffia by Morales since 2008. In his most recent works, Pedro Morales experiments with new materials and techniques, using elements produced by 3D printers, abstractly-created volumes turned into objects without going through industrial processes, displays with messages that can be deciphered with a mobile phone. His recent 3D pieces come from open-source handmade printers assembled by the artist himself. His work also talks with his own voice. Part of the advanced interactivity of his recent work, mediating mobile connectivity, is the fact that each code can bear a personal message which can be changed as life goes on, uploading phrases, URLs and feelings onto the art piece, just like any other social network.
In 2010 he participated in the Shanghai Art Expo in China, after having received invitations from Madrid, Bogota and Miami. He participated in the exhibit “Lago Vital” at the Lia Bermudez Center for the Arts in Maracaibo and Maquinico Museo de arte contemporáneo del Zulia. Maracaibo. In 2011, his individual exhibit “de redes y Cadenas” (of networks and Cadenas) at Galeria D’Museo is an artistic statement of the particular 21st-century phenomena known as “pan-communication”: Everything and everyone bearing contents and meanings in all combinations possible. Without sacrifice of the aesthetic engagement.
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