42 CONTEMPORARY ART. ONLINE EXHIBITION

Almería, Spain 1983

Lives and works in Los Angeles and Spain.

Alarcon has two bodies of work that both deal with an obsessive fascination with the surface of painting and the various ways that the surface can be interpreted and then manipulated via 3-dimensional modeling, mapping, and animation technology.

For the works on mylar, Alarcon begins by pouring paint into wood frames and letting the different paint layers dry with a topographi-cal sensibility. He then photographs the poured surfaces and renders the surfaces in a digital format using advanced imaging software like Rhino and Maya, often combining the two software platforms in ways that exceed either programs native capabilites.

Once the images are in digital format, he continues the process of manipulating the image, further complicating and developing the image. Once the work has reached a certain point of digital manipulation, the image is printed onto large sheets of mylar and Alarcon will either continue painting on the mylar as in the case of The Dark Valley, 2013, or he will opt to produce the final image as an unpainted limited edition digital print like Negro Polar, 2014. 

In the poured and carved images, Alarcon begins with the same process mentioned above, but instead of producing the images via printouts on mylar, he uses the topographical models he has created in Rhino and Maya to carve into the original paint molds using Computer Numerical Control machinery. At times he will include additional drawn elements that are inserted into the CNC programs adding more spontaneous moves to the piece. Once the machined portion of the process is complete, Alarcon completes the process by painting over portions of the poured and carved surfaces producing the final image. It is interesting to note that all of the work in the exhibition is culled from a single topographical source image, which has seemingly yielded an almost infinite number of possibilities.