Art Bytes: Elias Crespin

The internationally acclaimed Venezuelan artist who began his career as an engineer now makes massive, magical sculptures that move and dance.

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I first heard about the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain when I took psychology in college. One thing we learned was that the right side of the brain heightens the ability to be creative while the left side is in charge of organizing and analyzing two very different functions. Sort of like being right or left handed. If you use both hands equally, you're ambidextrous. What about someone who's able to use both sides of the brain equally? Well, that has a name too. It's called Golden Brain. Now, most of us tend to lean in one direction or the other, but there are people who are able to be creative and free spirited and rigid and logical all at once. Examples you'll recognize include Leonardo Da Vinci, a self-taught engineer who was also a painter, a sculptor, and a lot of other things. Michelangelo was a real underachiever. He painted the Sistine Chapel and was also an architect. Alexander Calder studied mechanical engineering before creating beautiful sculptures suspended in the air. It sounds exhausting using every part of your brain all the time, but when it works, an amazing experience is created. Welcome to Art Bytes, a podcast from the Nelson-atkins Museum of Art, where we take you beyond just the art on the walls and into the stories of the artist and the ideas behind them. I'm your host, Kathleen Layton. Today I'm joined by artist Elias Cressman, who was trained as an engineer and actually worked successfully in that field for years before completely changing lanes to become an artist. Ellis makes massive magical sculptures that move and dance to a rhythm he creates on a computer program. His work perfectly integrates the universes of science and art. He grew up in Caracas and his sculptures have been shown internationally and entered the collections of institutions, including the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, El Museo del Barrio in New York, and the Nelson-atkins since 2008. He has lived and worked in Paris. Thanks for joining us, Elias. Thank you, Cathleen. Let's go back to the beginning. Your grandparents were artists. Your parents were both mathematicians. What kind of a household was it to grow up in? I mean, did you solve math problems at dinner? What was that like? Sometimes I remember my dad on the phone talking to a colleague and solving or working out a theorem together on the phone. So that was a conversation at home that I could listen to. I think that growing up in a household with a with encouragement for science and arts through my parents and grandparents, that nursing and gave me a reference of that being a natural and connected world. So I naturally saw it together. I don't I don't really see the difference. And what kinds of things did you enjoy doing as a child? Well, building things or reading as well. Drawing. So both building and drawing, I, I wasn't that good at drawing, but I did very nice drawings. I'm sure you did. What about the engineer? Now, you did go to school to become an engineer. Did your parents encourage that? Well, indirectly, yes. I wanted to be an architect. In fact, maybe because my grandmother, as her background is in architecture and I had parents, friend's parents were architects, so I was very interested. But one day my father brought a computer home, the good old Apple two. I don't know if you you're young enough to to remember. And it came with a programing guide and I did the whole programing guide and I learned it was my first coding experience and learned to cope with that. And you would code lots of pixels, color, pixels, and moving pixels. You would learn how to make pixels move. There were big pixels at the time. And I got fascinated by generating numbers and using those numbers to plot dots or lines on the screen. So there were the first steps of computer graphics, and that was really seducing for me. And I decided I'm going to start a computer science. And you became very involved in that. I mean, it kind of sucked you in, right? Yes. And then you start working as a computer guy and coder or a software developer, a software engineer, and you do work for companies for payrolls and and ledgers. And and it's not the same thing as plotting dots on the screen, which is what my first seduced me. So I, I made a living out of it, but I wasn't so satisfied with it. It had lost its shine. Yeah. Do you remember the moment when you first started veering toward art? Was there a moment that you just thought to yourself, I'm. No, I don't want to do these payroll ledgers anymore. I don't want to code anymore. I want to do this art. I had a I could live out of this, so I wasn't that unsatisfied. But I do. I didn't have a void. Something was missing. And I remember stopping in front of a house. Soto Cube. Nylon cube of his was so dumb and being so surprised and excited about seeing this work and thinking, Wow, this computer functions or this mathematical functions model on a computer could control the movement of this cube, and maybe it would be a great thing. So I didn't think of it as getting into art, but I have this idea as an interesting, appealing thing to develop. And that stayed there for two years. And after two years I did have the time to experiment the basic techniques behind moving something from a computer program. It was in the early steps of robotics. 20 years ago, we didn't have so much information or materials available as we have today, but there were some old described motors and old desktop computers. I used those and I did my first experiments with them and this took two years. Your first art project, you researched and you tried different things and you experimented and you stuck with it for two years. So you are a problem solver and analytical problem solver. Yeah, I, I, I had this I do have this analytical way of approaching problems that compose a big problem into smaller problems and solve them one at a time with patients. Patients is very important. Do most artists have patients? I don't know. I don't know. I sometimes I sometimes don't have patients. But, you know, for example, I'm leaving home and I can find my keys and I start a can a bit anxious. But when you approach a project, if you can afford not to have a deadline, it's a complex project and you, you set up a roadmap even though the the further parts of the road are blurry are still blurry. You can start with at least the first part of the road map and go step by step enjoying the way. And that's probably the best when you're enjoying the way. So problem solving is the same for engineers as for artists. Really. There is a similarity in the way you approach a problem, either artistic problem or expression. How do I? Because in my art and in many artists art, there is a fabrication materialization of the idea that requires a an effort and and a systematic approach, which engineering gives you. So I think having done this, engineering first part gave me the tools to be the artist I am right now. So let's talk about Grand Hex in it. It was first shown in Paris. It's now a permanent installation at the Nelson-atkins. It's a geometric sculpture that's made up of metal rods that are all suspended in the air by invisible threads. Tell us where the idea came from and how it became Grand Hex. Annette. Well, I had already produced two smaller, small hexagons. They are like about. About two and a half by two and a half feet. So they're not that big? And Graham Hickson is 20 by 20 feet. 20 feet by 20 feet. It's here about. Yes, it's. It's not square. The dimensions are not square, but around 20 by 20. So I had made two smaller hexagons, which are displayed right now in an exhibition I have in a museum in Sweden. I have a 12 pieces 12 Artworks exhibition in Sweden and Emile, a city called Emile right now, going on until January 2025 and part of that exhibition are the two smaller hexagons. They're called Hex and ZENIT in NOx and hex and on tubes. And they were the basic ground idea behind Grand Hex in it. So this was your experiment before making the huge one you made to small ones and the opportunity to make and the, the, the trigger to make this grand hex. And it came when I was invited to participate in Artists and Robots exhibition in Paris that was held in the venue Grand Palais, and it was an exhibition on computer imagination, so to say, very interesting exhibition, which is your lane computer imagination. Yeah. So I'm not the curator Together with Lawrence Bethe and I co-curator, they invited me to imagine a work for a huge tower that that stands above the Horner stairway of the Grand Palais. There was only one possible hand point, and it had about 35 to 40 feet diameter the tower. So I mounted Grand Hex on it. And that's why it has only one suspension point. The whole structure is suspended on one point. And it was because I couldn't attach to walls or the breast of a ceiling. I could only hand where the the chandelier used to be in that tower. So interesting, because you're solving a problem like that and the public never sees the problems that are being solved along the way. But you as an artist see them and you have to be really meticulous with what you're doing. Yes, there are lots of details in one of my works, but I, I like to hide all those details and present simple to to experience art. And yeah, of course you have the intuition when you see it that there's a lot going on behind the scenes, but I don't show it because it distracts. We can talk about it. We could go through the details if you want, but it's not the real art expression that I want to show. That's the means to get to the art, which is the dance of suspended physical elements. And talk about that when when people come. When it was being installed, people could not look away. They stopped. They looked up. They couldn't believe these small rods, red metal rods, were moving and they were fascinated by that. So what is it that you want people to take away from one of your sculptures? Well, my best reward is that people get inspired and and are brought some drawing by experiencing the artwork. How do you decide how the pieces will move? Each one of those rods has its own motor. Is that correct? Yeah. In fact, each rod or tube, they are very light aluminum tubes, anodized red. I am. Each one is suspended to two motors, one on each and. And that's incredibly complex. Yeah. So there are 90 tubes suspended by their two ends, each into a motor. So there are 180 motors controlling the individual positioning of each end of the tube. And it's all controlled from a computer. And the computer is able to receive my choreography. The the software on the computer that I wrote as well received the choreography definition and is able to convert that choreography into commands to the motors. So the choreography materializes in front of your eyes. It seems like magic when you're looking at it. Is that what you intend? I don't intend it, really. But magic is everywhere in life. So it is there too. Where do you see your practice headed in the future? I don't know. We'll see then. On this. On this path that we're seeing. I have enough still to. To try. I want to try new materials like wall wall threads. I'm working with both wool threads. And it's interesting. It's some very earthy material. I like it. So it's on a wall. It's not suspended. It is suspended. But I'm combining the wall with the metal rods or elements. So if you look at my website, you'll. You'll see an example called The Dance of the Captain, Harry's Le Dance Denarius, which is a work, the first work I've done with tubes and wool threads. And your website. Tell us what that is. It's Alias Chris being or alliance question dot com or dot net. So a perfectly functional tech product is not so very different from a beautiful piece of art. Would you say that technically it's not very different, but there's a conceptual, important conceptual difference in, in the intention of, of the, the outcome, which is just to look at it and, and for the joy of the express it's made just because of the joy and the expression of the artist. There's not a commercial or useful, particularly useful practical intention behind it. So that's, that's some main difference. And while you unless it's conceptual art, you won't have like a washing machine in a museum, although there are a lot of moving parts there as well. Yeah, it's interesting. Once I heard a person, she didn't know I was listening and she saw my work and she said, It's like watching the laundry on the wash machine, meaning you can't look away. Right. And then you do disconnect from your there day to day just by watching it, like watching fire or the clouds or the stars, which was high praise that she gave you. Yeah, well, I am very grateful to the golden brains like you who put such unexpected pleasure into the world. Thank you so much, Alice Crisp. And for bringing your magic to us. You've been listening to Art Bytes, a podcast from the Nelson-atkins Museum of Art. I'm Kathleen Layton. We'll see you next time. Thank you very much.