Toward a Notional Site of Production: an interview with Martin Soto Climent
The following is a conversation between myself and artist Martin Soto Climent (Mexico City, 1977) that took place across Skype, email, phone calls and travel together in Northern CA. during the production of the exhibition Many Places at Once for the Wattis Institute (S.F. April 17-July 12, 2014), which I co-curated. A portion of this interview, which investigates the artist's idiosyncratic working method, is published in the exhibition's catalog, and may be downloaded for free, in full, on the Wattis website. Soto Climent currently has a solo exhibition at his Los Angeles gallery Michael Benevento on view through October 31, 2014.
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The artist’s sketchbook might be thought of as a site of formative aesthetic gestures, of experimentation with line, color, and form. It is a private space for preliminary studies of what might one day become more fully developed paintings, drawings, or installations. Whatever the subject of a sketchbook’s pages, one can expect their rendering to be rough, quick, not fully articulated. As transportable objects, sketchbooks can travel with an artist to various sites of inspiration, and thus function as a space of production exiled from the studio. What might be the significance of a sketchbook, however, when it becomes the primary site of artistic process, replacing the physical site of the studio entirely? Martin Soto Climent (Mexican, born 1977) engages a contemplative artistic process that plays out within the pages of dozens of notebooks he carries in his back pocket. In lieu of a physical studio practice––and using just a pen––the artist reflectively documents the world around him, a process evidenced by the varied markings between the bounds of little black notebooks stacked in a pile on the floor of his room in Mexico City.
The notes and sketches found within the bounds of the artist’s books are where Soto Climent sorts through his own processes; informal sketches, notes, poems, exhibition layouts, and other visual meditations fill their pages. If a small book of blank pages might hold the capacity for storing years of artistic thought and experimentation, what need is there for the physical structure of a studio? No longer an architectural site of production, but a notional one, Soto Climent inhabits his notebooks as wholly and engagingly as the next artist might inhabit his or her fabrication studio.
In his installation There Once Was a Place (mixed media, 2014) for Many Places at Once, Soto Climent attempted to visually parse his own mental map, a gesture that had not yet seen a physical manifestation by the artist. When considering what an artist’s process might actually look like, Soto Climent offers us a diagrammatic attempt at the intimate workings of the artist’s psyche, the notes and momentary glint of inspiration, or perhaps the single line drawing of an un-named man. Pushing his own practice beyond its normal limitations––largely mimicking the approach he takes with his usual source materials––Soto Climent exposes the inner workings of the emotional, intellectual, and creative systems that precede the physical work of art as the audience normally receives it. It is as if years of “studio practice” were recorded onto sheets of paper, and revealed to us through this piece. Except, of course, that this particular practice is not bound by the confines of the studio, and rather advances an individual’s intimate markings that are reflective of his own experience in the world.
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[CH] I know you’ve long given up on the idea of your studio space in the south of Mexico City as the physical site of your production. Given your on-site and often spontaneous working method with everyday objects and materials, has the loss of a traditional studio actually affected your practice at all?
[MSC] I think I spent more time working in the improvised kitchen I used to have than in "the studio." The streets are my working field. It never really made sense for me to have a studio for my work for simple reasons––the first being, I don't really work! Meaning I don’t produce things. All my pieces are movements or simple gestures that turn the object into something else, but this object can always come back to its original sate, to what it was before. Once the idea is expressed, the objects can turn back into what they were before and essentially disappear. They can be reintegrated into life after living for an instant as art. This process requires a lot of contemplation to understand how can you modify an object without really changing it.
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[CH] And I imagine this contemplation takes place throughout the pages of your notebooks... Does the shift from the physical studio to the interior space of your notebooks more fully reflect your creative process since they can be taken anywhere, and thus free you from the confines of working in only one location?
[MSC] The notebooks are essential. When projects become more complex than independent and spontaneous gestures involving just one object––an installation for example––it is a more involved process. Each new object I add to the installation affects the others, the extent to which is never evident until the end, when everything is spatially organized around a central concept. I document that process and my thoughts around it in my notebook. It can’t function any other way. My work doesn’t take shape in a studio, but in the moment.
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[CH] I saw quite a few stacks of them on the floor, but how many notebooks do you think you actually have?
[MSC] How many? I have…. no idea! When should I start counting?
I guess if I think about my own history I could count them. I started traveling by myself, thinking, moving, and walking. Walking has become another important practice for me for the past fifteen years. When I think about the notebooks I went through during these travels, I guess I have close to fifty. It’s hard to say. Some years I used four notebooks, plus a few sketchbooks, other years just two. Thinking about it now reminds me of the name of one of my past shows, Following the Whisper of my Shadow.
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[CH] Aside from your process that can be documented in a notebook––or carrying women's stockings with you everywhere––what else does your process entail? How do you come across the materials you engage in your installations?
[MSC] I like to improvise. I feel closer to a Jazz player than a painter who prepares and works for weeks. I like the energy of things when they come fresh to my mind and I don't have time to distort them with rational insecurities.
I’m conscious about what I want to express in my work, but one thing I realize is that mental process alone is not enough to create an art piece that involves many complex human relationships, emotions, fears, desires, existential longing, etc. I’m also very aware about our particular time and moment. That’s why I don't produce things. I don't think we need more stuff, more "garbage" around. And I believe art not only describes our time, it also opens ways to move into the future in a sustainable way.
My method of working is a constant meditation. Everything starts from within, but the moment I find an object that works to express something I’m interested in, I manipulate it almost immediately. If I find an object that makes sense for a specific project, I keep it. If it makes sense to leave it in the street, I leave it there in its manipulated form. And, if it makes sense to turn it back to what it was before and return it to where I found it, I do that too.
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[CH] In what ways has Lulu [a project space co-founded in 2013 with American curator Chris Sharp in Mexico City] shaped your own creative practice? Does it perhaps serve as a space of contemplation much like the studio used to, or is it a separate entity from your own art?
[MSC] Lulu was an excuse to spend more time in Mexico and reconnect with the city and the scene in an active and serious way. It influences my work because it requires a lot of attention, but that was in the beginning. Now I have the feeling it runs by itself. It’s not really linked to my practice, but it is to my life, so it changes things. I love it.
It’s a project where Chris and I can utilize our international network to respond to local conditions. People have recently taken an interest in the art scene in Mexico City, and Lulu is a place where we can show artists who don’t have gallery representation and connect them to a local and international audience at the same time. It’s a place to have conversations, and to make friends, really.
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[CH] How has the prompt of this commission allowed for a space of self-reflexivity regarding your own artistic process?
[MSC] This commission is a very specific work because it’s about the process itself. I have to use the process to describe the process, and then present it as a piece. I believe every art piece I do involves all of that, but somehow for this occasion I have to show the backstage of my production, only to discover that there really is no stage at all. Somehow there are still many actors and elements that come into play during my process and here I’ve created a space where all the elements can each play themselves…. it is a great experience.
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