Barcelona-based artist Antoni Hervas' residency aims to develop a new body of work based on research into LGBTQ and subcultural histories of Los Angeles, which he will link to political histories of queer experience in Spain in an act of cultural exchange. 18SAC’s international residency programme hosts 35-45 international artists and curators annually, serving over 500 artists and art workers from 61 countries since 1998.
Antoni Hervas’ artistic practice stems from research into the limits of drawing. This discipline, simple and elastic in its essence, allows other disciplines not only to conform to it, but to be absorbed by it, expanding and potentially increasing their creative capacities. Hervas understands the creative process as something liquid, something that absorbs and becomes contaminated by its surroundings. He is interested in shaping his style to the environment in which he is working, adhering to the specifics of the concept and the context of study to both expand his registers and make his work something familiar (or strangely comfortable) to the context where it is shown. In his work methodology is indispensable and he gets physically engaged with the materials of study, a first-person experience that allows him to analyze and comprehend those context specific questions from the inside.
While in the Los Angeles region, Hervas will exhaustively investigate the ONE Archive at USC (http://one.usc.edu), focused on gender and queer issues, seeking clues to how personal narratives could be intertwined with this complex and immense network of knowledge, going from the micro to the macro. Hervas has extensively worked with archives in the past, departing from the idea of giving a body to a specific archive, a body that then interferes and intrudes with reality as a documentary object, generating an atemporal vortex in which past and present meet, allowing the viewers to revive an almost obsolete sensation.
Antoni Hervas’ artistic practice stems from research into the limits of drawing. This discipline, simple and elastic in its essence, allows other disciplines not only to conform to it, but to be absorbed by it, expanding and potentially increasing their creative capacities. Hervas understands the creative process as something liquid, something that absorbs and becomes contaminated by its surroundings. He is interested in shaping his style to the environment in which he is working, adhering to the specifics of the concept and the context of study to both expand his registers and make his work something familiar (or strangely comfortable) to the context where it is shown. In his work methodology is indispensable and he gets physically engaged with the materials of study, a first-person experience that allows him to analyze and comprehend those context specific questions from the inside.
While in the Los Angeles region, Hervas will exhaustively investigate the ONE Archive at USC (http://one.usc.edu), focused on gender and queer issues, seeking clues to how personal narratives could be intertwined with this complex and immense network of knowledge, going from the micro to the macro. Hervas has extensively worked with archives in the past, departing from the idea of giving a body to a specific archive, a body that then interferes and intrudes with reality as a documentary object, generating an atemporal vortex in which past and present meet, allowing the viewers to revive an almost obsolete sensation.