What roles can screens play in contemporary art given their ubiquity in virtually all aspects of human existence? Hector Llanquin is a Chilean multimedia artist based in Brooklyn who works as a web programmer and developer by day and delves into the beautiful geometries of digital art, printing, and installation by night. He originally studied painting in Chile but gradually drifted from the canvas to the screen, creating abstract landscapes and architectures inspired by indigenous mythology, video games, geology, and horticulture, among other natural and digital elements.
As part of Remezcla’s series with Cazadores®, Hector created an original video piece to elaborate on his creative process and the differences and similiarities among painting, coding, the built environment, and nature. Here, he sheds more light on his artistic development and philosophy.
On his development as a web artist
When I started studying art in Chile, I realized that the conversation going on about digital art tended to over-value the process itself. I thought, “Why?” At the end of they day, processes are tools, nothing more. I’m not interested in restricting an artwork to a rectangle or to a discursive loop; I prefer to create a living narrative. I am most interested in the languages, real and imagined, that can be articulated via these tools.
On his views on technology
Technology is part of nature in my view. It’s a product of human experimentation and is full of allegories that derive from biology. And it doesn’t only involve a relationship between human languages and code but also connections between physical and digital space and the past, memories, and the future.
On his travels and their impact on his work
When I moved to Mexico from Chile, I found myself living in an environment in which you constantly grappled with history in real time. In Chile, this doesn’t exist because most of the indigenous people were wiped out. I used to view the digital as a way of manifesting my own idiosyncrasies, but Mexico allowed me to explore the spaces that deal with memory and imagine possible memories and futures based in possible pasts. In Mexico, I was forced to take on the past and present and decide that this work was the work that I was meant to be doing and that I come from all of this, personally, professionally, and creatively. I belong to all of this.