Marcos Lora is an author of profound aesthetic spectrum, who is not exitist, who makes drawings, installations, objects, paintings, video, site-specific projects and artist books. He was born in the Dominican Republic, where he lives and works, being a citizen of the world through its ongoing exhibitions and international residencies. He graduated from Altos de Chavon, he then did bronze smelting courses in New York, and made a graduate degree in the School of Arts in the Netherlands. His language is not iterative; he deconstructs the usual images to expose the concept-structure relationship. His poetic rationalization can be corroborated in the interview transcribed here...
Marcos, how do you characterize your creative process? Do you begin with an idea, or do you start drawing until something wants to become three-dimensional, or...?
It’s always an idea, something constant that disturbs me or bothers me; from there I begin to look for ways and means to express and communicate that idea.
In which yearwould you say you realized you were a professional artist?
I would say from 1990.
Yourconceptualism has scientific aspects or is a pure aesthetic fantasy?
Perhaps it is dueto my reluctance the fact that "theCaribbean" is only understood from the vision of the good savage. Just look at the promotional images of the past expos made in Europe and the United States about the Caribbean. I've always been bothered by stereotypes. I guess is because of that, a little of the fiction and reality mixture.
Did you enroll yourself for the first private interplanetary travel? If the answer is no, would you like to do it?
No, I think my reality is here in the relationship between human beings. If my life and my work have something of an Argonaut is not from the trip as an escape, but as pollination, exchange of ideas and knowledge, just for a better understanding between human beings. From what I have understood, for now the space is an empty and cold place, and if there is something I like is the people’s warmth.
Can we see some of your drawings?
The truth is I don’t draw as much as I would like, because the tropics is very aggressive with the paper, that’s why the sketches of the models are basically for the personnel file...
How do you think an artist leaves the lot? How does he get to be unique, original and authentic?
For his talent, it all depends on his job! Of course, a little luck with a lot of discipline is always helpful.
You travel and exhibit constantly. Why are you still living in your home country, the Dominican Republic?
For a contemporary artist in the Caribbean, is like being the voice crying in the desert. Here we are full of dichotomies. Living day to day and to convey what we are, and at the same time contribute with the universal art, from Dominican Republic to the world, is fascinating, although Iam really united to this country by a matter of principles. The first of my works that became part of the Museum of Santo Domingo’s collection is called Brains Drain(1990).
Do you think that there is today a center of art or is it fragmented?
The art center is fragmented since some time ago, as you say, unlike the power that has been increasingly centralized. Today you can know by pictures the work of Marcos Lora Read with a computer, from anywhere in the world, thanks to technology. Still, the metropolis artists’ works have achieved unprecedented prices, while the rest is getting worse, and they still continue without a significant presence inthe market.
How do you feel closer: the conceptual, the machinery, the surreal, the metaphysical thing or...?
The conceptualists should be asked to define themselves, butif we say that in conceptual art (Idea Art) the idea is more important than the object, or the sense in which the work was created, I seem I am closer tothem.
Marcos Lora Read chooses five artists with whom to exhibit, who are they?
Harald Vlugt, Willem Sanders, Vahap Avsar, Mark Gibian and Manolo Gonzalez.
With precise and clear answers of a connoisseur of its environment, Marcos Lora Read has worked a lot with wood, cutting, joining, creating suspended objects, vessels and structures; metaldrums, wheels, homes, boats, synthetic tribalism elements, flowers, birds, insects, fishes, animals, masonry work and details that disrupt the real scene to the fictional one. And he has also made works that accompany beings with antennas, to space crafts and rituals; levitation, suspension; some plastics, fibers, paper, textiles, nylon, rods, wires and ideas of an actuality teacher, floating in the space of personal creation.
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