(upbeat music) (waves crashing) (video glitching) (upbeat music) (air whooshing) (gentle music) - [Carlos] Hey how is it going?

- Hi Carlos - Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you too, I'm Sophia.

It's a muggy, stormy day.

And I'm visiting artist Carlos Vela-Prado in his Greenpoint studio.

Carlos moved to the space three years ago after having various studios in Williamsburg.

I love these big old freight elevators.

Carlos travels the world gathering photographs and materials that inform and inspire his work.

I was eager to find out how he combines all of his ideas into one process.

From what I know, from your work, which I've only seen online, on your website, I can tell that it's very conceptual and you're kind of straddling many, many different materials and different ways of thinking about ideas and meanings.

I mean, could you tell me a little bit about the materials?

- So I went to school for sculpture, but I came from a background within photography and computer science basically.

And what drew me to sculpture was the fact that I can form a conversation around a concept and really engage a space and kind of activate it.

And within that, I am a person that loves learning and I like to teach myself all these different kinds of mediums.

So it's like, I like to kind of confuse the kind of organic ideas that one's perception of what a painting would be like or what a drawing would be like.

These are just panels that I'm preparing for these photographic frescoes that I've kind of been working on and off for the last six years.

And it's gone through many iterations.

- What's a photographic fresco?

- Exactly.

I'm always trying to invent something a new way of working.

So this is trying to find a way to photographically expose an image on a plaster surface.

So the image that I'm using here is actually from last year from the migrant crisis on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

- Yeah.

- So this image really kind of took a hold of me.

And I just kept thinking about how, you know, in Italy, Italian frescoes, it's always a procession, it's always kind of a group of people moving.

I kind of got obsessed with this photo that I think people really gloss over.

When do they initially see this?

It's just the atrocities of being shot - You know, a mother and her children being shot with tear gas, but the clothing that they're wearing, she's wearing a Frozen shirt and, you know, and the little girl was wearing a little Buzz Light Year shirt, but then for me it became this other aspect of the transfers of clothes between America and the different parts of the world and, you know, the waste and all.

(gentle music) This is a finished artwork.

This is a scale replica of Manet's Olympia which is this painting right here.

This is just called Olympia.

This is one of the earliest things that I was doing with this plaster medium.

I really like this piece.

And because of its inherent, again, back to what I was saying, it's very minimal, I took high risk photographs of the painting.

And I found where all the cracks were in the painting right now.

The plaster in itself is tinted to be the same color as it was first shown at the Salon de Paris and then going in there, it's actually carved into the plaster.

- [Sophia] So when you're putting the marks with the graphite, you're not just leaving a mark, you're carving out.

- So it's actually all carved and then filled with graphite.

What happens here is just through time and itself, like the white, female figure actually just completely gets blurred out.

But what happens with just the painting, the physicality of the painting, it creates a halo around the black figure.

And I think that's kind of a very beautiful way.

And the in painting itself is kind of changing its own history through time and kind of letting you think about it in a certain, in a different way.

- It seems like you're in your studio and you're playing with meaning.

And if something has meaning that it has history, but even in the midst of all this kind of enigma, at first glance, it seems like you're finding new meanings and new connections.

And I'm wondering what that makes a studio feel like when you're in here, do you feel like you can't focus on one thing?

Are you like moving around?

Are you writing things down?

- The best way to make sense of how I work is kind of going back to computer science.

Basically, I'm thinking of an idea or a concept and every individual artwork is like a line of code in order to describe something else.

So it's the build up of all these individual artworks that create the final artwork.

- Establishing a flow, like a workflow is something that has driven me to madness many times.

Sometimes it has to do with maybe being in the studio every day, repetitively.

And then you kind of get into the flow.

Sometimes it happens in an hour.

Sometimes it takes a week.

I'm wondering, can you talk to me about your workflow?

What does that feel like?

- Can you just say that again?

What if, sorry.

- You know, like a flow sate?

- No, I do know a flow state.

But that's I think inherently what's problematic with being an artist in which we just never stop.

You know, I feel like there was a moment at one time after grad school that I was sitting there with my friend and we were both having, you know, we were both working whatever jobs we had and we went for dinner and we sat there and we're looking at everyone walking by and we're like, this is just not fair.

Like everyone, you know, who has, you know, who works, you know, for a living doing, you know, construction or something, going back to their home to their family has this idea of having time off and with whatever we have done, it's just like we can never have time off.

So there's always this kind of anxiety of trying to get one more thing finished before the night is over.

(Thunder) - [Sophia] What's the name of the storm again?

- [Carlos] Isaias.

- [Sophia] Isaias.

- Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty bad.

- How far are we right now from..?

- It's a 10 minute walk.

It's not too far.

So it's kind of we're in the industry side of Greenpoint and we're walking towards the old industry side but obviously it's turning around with all the construction near the waterfront.

- How do you feel about that?

- It's a mixed bag of things.

I like how quiet it was.

It is now relatively, but it's obvious that it's going to just going to be an influx of people.

- [Sophia] My God, your house is amazing.

- [Carlos] Thanks.

- It's nice to see your face too.

- I know, its a little bit awkward, but come on in.

- Wow, how long have you had this place?

- My wife has been here for about seven years, please.

- Oh yeah?

- Yeah.

So it's kind of one of these old Brooklyn, you know, chaotic spaces that someone built out that really shouldn't have, but it's been amazing.

So and it's been great - I love it.

- to be here during the pandemic because it allows us to have space and, you know, I can work at home as well.

And this is Imo.

I am from Guatemala, I was born in Guatemala.

And my dad came here when I was born, basically, lived here until he got his residency and then my mother and I came over.

So I was about around eight years old when that happened.

- Oh, wow.

- So and then we grew up in, well, I grew up on Long Island, with a name like Carlos, it's obviously that I'm not like, let's say American, right.

But it is, I am from Guatemala, but I am much more - I'm an American, as an American can be, the American dream is...

I kind of fall in line with that.

And then kind of, you know, I understand where I come from and I understand the responsibility and that's kind of part of it's that ties into my work because it's a struggle that I have.

How do I acknowledge myself as a minority, but also as an American, without exoticizing myself or my culture.

I've been making these drawings with a machine.

I found this 3D printer, I started getting into 3D printing and back into robotics and coding.

And last year I was making these drawings by hand, which took, you know, weeks to make.

And they're all very, you know, mechanical in a sense, but in the way that they're produced, I'd like that, you know, there's always some sort of, I was never perfect.

You know, it's like, I'm not a machine.

But it got to the point, it's like, all right, what if I make a machine to make these things for me?

Within that, I wanted to kind of push the boundaries off the software and actually really simplify it.

So not have something that's very exact or very controlled.

But I actually attached, let's say, the most simplest object.

and that being the pencil, the pencil itself blurs the lines of the mark making and the creator.

I have a particular notion of the idea of the artists and the artists making drawings within the school of thought that mark making in itself could be inherently an artwork.

And for that, if I can separate myself and add a filter, that is also mark making on its own without my control, but allow itself to make accidents.

Then I feel like that gives the agency to an idea and the machine, as opposed to me as the artist, just making a mark on a piece of paper and letting that be the artwork.

I think there's a preciousness that artists can imbue in things that I'm sort of against.

The removal of me and adding something that kind of complicates it, I find that very interesting.

- You're dealing with all of these ideas that are invisible.

They're invisible, they're in your head they're in your soul, in your heart, they're floating around and you're having to negotiate, like you said, these different things and have them maybe strike a new meeting, maybe accidentally or on purpose.

I'm wondering if sometimes those ideas feel more concrete than the substances in the materials that you use?

- I'm going to say no, I think that's the beauty of it because it is a negotiation.

What I'm trying to do is orchestrate these different moments in time, in space, with different objects, to kind of allude to a kind of, you know, melody and chorus in my head that I don't think it's very easy to kind of understand, but if I can drive the meaning and points via a text, a photo, a video, to allude to a feeling that I have an actual feeling or an actual, you know, idea, if I can approach that, that's the goal.

(gentle music) There are machines involved in everything but I never want them to be at the forefront.

It's doing this for me but it's not the end I have to go in and erase things - there are specifics.

So it actually brings it back to this idea of photography, which at the end of the day, I still have to dodge and burn the actual image.

So I have to go in and like take out the highlights, you know, darken the darker spots by using a smudge stick.

It becomes this whole play as well.

- Do you feel like this project and even this machine, do you feel like it's part of a new maybe area in your work?

Maybe in a step forward that you haven't been before?

Would you say it even defines you more clearly as an artist?

- No.

- Do you have one that does?

- One work?

- A one project or one work yeah.

That you were like, yeah, this is who I am.

This is the work I'm making now I see myself.

- I don't think so.

I think it's within the whole aspect of, I think within my whole body of work.

It's basically that's what it's going to come down to.

I think when it's all looked together at once.

Maybe I'm just a little bit narcissistic, in that I think, you know, when it all comes together, maybe there's a greater story within it.

And I think that will be me and it it'll be my story.

(upbeat music) - Ideas can strike us at any moment, but we can also seek them out, cultivate them, pluck them out of a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts.

Sometimes we need to get lost in the process in order to find a clarity that's meaningful or new.

Sometimes only the bigger picture forms the ultimate meaning of what we're working on.

And sometimes it's just the journey itself that's fulfilling.

(gentle music)