Visual Strolls

seasonal residency

Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.

Winter 2018/2019 Artist in Residence

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Diego Mallo

Diego is a visual artist and illustrator based in Barcelona. Diego’s work is a celebration of visual poetry, experimentation and interdisciplinary influences. Whether in his illustrations, book covers or artworks you are sure to frequently find attentive captures of expressiveness of human gesture, ironic observations of everyday life, or tender meeting between inner and outer worlds.


Winter 2018/2019 Portrait

Diego Mallo
Mi foresta

Pienso la foresta como un espacio de calma, de cobijo, de contemplación. Pienso un espacio fértil para habitar o transitar, pero también un espacio inabarcable, salvaje y desconocido. Mi taller es un bosque, un lugar donde lo imprevisto es posible, donde el encuentro, la sorpresa y la relación entre los elementos es tan, o más, importante que las cosas en sí.

Cuando visito un bosque, me interesan los árboles, las hojas, la hierba,... pero me interesan, quizás aún más, la luz, el detalle, las texturas y escalas o la perspectiva. Siempre regreso con algo que me ha sido imposible dejar: pueden ser hojas, ramitas, cortezas o semillas. Son pequeñas cosas cuyo destino en su hábitat sería convertirse en sustrato. Para mí son texturas, colores, formas perfectas y fascinantes que acaban formando un sustrato formal y simbólico en mi, y ahora, en mi estudio.

Mi foresta está habitada sobre todo por hojas, de papel, que se amontonan o que caen al suelo, pero a veces hacen el camino inverso. Pasan de la mesa a la pared, o acaban suspendidas en hilos. Se agrupan de manera caprichosa y casi siempre en equilibro.

He hecho fotos de mis trabajos en su “entorno natural”: mi estudio. Estas fotografías tienen un impulso parecido al que tengo cuando fotografío o contemplo la naturaleza. Muestran algunos trabajos acabados pero, sobre todo, múltiples dibujitos o recortes que hago por divertimento y que cuelgo por las paredes o acumulo para proyectos futuros. Son imágenes nacidas de restos de papeles y fragmentos de personajes rescatados de sesiones de monotipia o de proyectos diversos. Este proceso de reutilización nace del caos en el estudio y es la materia prima de búsquedas y encuentros creativos.
My forest

I think of the forest as a space of calm, of shelter, of contemplation. I think of it as a fertile space to inhabit or transit, but also as an unembraceable, wild and unknown. My studio is a forest, a place where the unexpected is possible, where the encounter, the surprise and the relationship between the elements is as, or more, important than the things themselves.

When I visit a forest, I am interested in trees, leaves, grass,... but I am also interested, perhaps even more, in light, detail, textures and scales or perspective. I always come back with something that has been impossible for me to leave: can be leaves, twigs, bark or seeds. Those small things whose destiny in their habitat would be to become substrate. For me they are textures, colours, perfect and fascinating forms that end up forming a formal and symbolic substratum in me, and now, in my studio.

My forest is inhabited above all by sheets of paper, which pile up or fall to the ground, but sometimes make the opposite path. They pass from the table to the wall, or end up suspended in threads. They group together capriciously and almost always in equilibrium.

I have taken photos of my works in their “natural environment”: my studio. These photographs have an impulse similar to the one I have when I photograph or contemplate nature. They show some finished works but, above all, multiple drawings and cut-outs that I do for fun and that I hang on the walls, or accumulate for future projects. They are images born of paper left-overs and fragments of characters rescued from monotype sessions or other projects. This process of reuse is born from the chaos in the studio and is the raw material for searches and creative encounters.

About Visual Strolls

Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.

Cover image: Diego Mallo