Things We have accumulated knowledge, formulated theories, and found possible explanations for some of the fundamental questions. We have even created gods in our own image and likeness, but we still think and act homocentrically, believing that the entire universe, with its billions of galaxies made up of their billions or trillions of stars, circles around us. As if everything belonged to us, as if we could do anything with everything, as if we were the greatest thing. But... above all, many things or few things is not a big deal. Something strange is that anything or something has something to do with an other thing. There’s nothing else to think, that’s life... kid’s stuff, grown-up stuff, and if not, well, on to something else. But, would you believe it! In something like a minute ago, I had never seen anything like this. Everything in its place; home things, the public thing, things we share... everything or few things. As if nothing happened, what a pointless thing... Don’t we have anything more important to do? It's a matter of patience, but that's a different thing. Craze thing! Oh, isn't that something! What a thing! What? What a weird idea! Well... that's my business. Things We have accumulated knowledge, formulated theories, and found possible explanations for some of the fundamental questions. We have even created gods in our own image and likeness, but we still think and act homocentrically, believing that the entire universe, with its billions of galaxies made up of their billions or trillions of stars, circles around us. As if everything belonged to us, as if we could do anything with everything, as if we were the greatest thing. But... above all, many things or few things is not a big deal. Something strange is that anything or something has something to do with an other thing. There’s nothing else to think, that’s life... kid’s stuff, grown-up stuff, and if not, well, on to something else. But, would you believe it! In something like a minute ago, I had never seen anything like this. Everything in its place; home things, the public thing, things we share... everything or few things. As if nothing happened, what a pointless thing... Don’t we have anything more important to do? It's a matter of patience, but that's a different thing. Craze thing! Oh, isn't that something! What a thing! What? What a weird idea! Well... that's my business. For English Para Español Para português Per l'Italiano En français Für Deutsch 日本語で聞く場合は、 ¿Qué cosa? (What?) 36 telephones that belonged to a police station, 36 images stolen on the streets with a phone mounted on plexiglass, acrylic ink, voices and electronic circuits in a rusty iron box. 14x95x185cm Aluminium Vertido Duratrans on Plexiglas over electronic circuit boards in light box. 21 x 120 x 234 cm Plasticosa Duratrans on plexiglass over my plastic waste from a year, latex and acrylic paint in a light box. 13 x 90 x 234 cm Eva, Adán y las cosas 13 minute video from a dance performance. Music for Basuróphonos, female voice, handsaw and percussion, 32 inch screen and media player in oxidised iron box 13 x 90 x 120 cm Plasticosa Duratrans on plexiglass over my plastic waste from a year, latex and acrylic paint in a light box. 13 x 90 x 234 cm Cosas son solo cosas (Things are just things) front: Siver gelatin on canvas / back: Poliuretane foan, acrylic, iron pigments and broken bycicle frame. 90 x 146 cm Cosa de niños (Kid stuff) Toy guns, iron, iron oxide and hydroxide on jute canvas. 90 x 146 x 10 cm Collecting Things - Banana gelatin on plate urine toned Silver gelatin on paper gold toned. 49 x 59 cm Plasticosa Duratrans on plexiglass over my plastic waste from a year, latex and acrylic paint in a light box. 13 x 90 x 234 cm Home

SymmetroS Muy pronto - Em breve - Coming soon Home

What are you doing the rest of your life? Talking about my project "What are you doing the rest of your life?" requires going back to 2006, when I present in Switzerland my audiovisual installation "Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos", where I reflect on the exhaustion of resources. Imagining myself in a hypothetical decadent future, I built two musical instruments, based on my intuition and with no other resources than the remains of richer times; "basura", trash, hence the name of the instruments This was my first approach to sound art, which years later led me to create the project Music for 18 Things, in which, without being a musician or luthier, I built instruments for an orchestra and composed a musical piece, questioning what we expect from people, what we do with our own lives, or why, when we meet someone, the first thing we ask is what they do for a living. A long time ago, a friend accidentally played a piano key, and I asked her to repeat it. After playing it, she asked me why, and I told her it was the first note Bill Evans plays in the song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" Then she asked me: "And you, what are you doing the rest of your life, since you always say you're going to start studying music and you never do?" I decided then that this note and the next two would be the question, the raison of being of "Music for 18 Things," surely my most difficult and audacious work, full of questions, hesitation and a need to learn. After months of development, rehearsing every Saturday and Sunday with 14 musicians in my studio in Barcelona, dealing with my personal limitations and questions, both technical and conceptual, and after the premiere in Italy, then in the Basque Country and Barcelona, I decided to reformulate that same question, to repeat those same notes: Do – Si – Mi. "¿Qué - ha - rás?" What will you do? In a much simpler work, alone in my studio, using techniques and materials I know. And in a moment of needing isolation, "Què Faràs?" was born, full of references from important people and circumstances in my life, which attracted or repelled me, but which influenced me enormously, long before the word "influencer" existed with its current meaning. "Què Faràs?" was born as a piece, but remained latent for years, as a starting point for a new series of works in which I would repeat the same question, in different circumstances of life. As in other works of mine, iron oxide and hydroxide, and even the oxidation process itself, merge in gestures of expressionism and abstraction that allude to life and to the most fundamental of all questions: existence. Adapting the work into a large-scale mural format for Music Street in Jaime Lerner Park in Curitiba, Brazil, was definitely the catalyst that propelled the project, which had been waiting for over a decade for other projects, or perhaps waiting for a circumstance that would led me again to ask myself: What will you do for the rest of your life? And my heart beats… once more, and at the same time one less… I don't know, I have more and more questions each second. Què faràs? - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and piano strings on canvas. 108 x 193 cm Que farás? - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic iron sheets and piano strings. 7 x 15 m. Making of Que farás? Curitiba - video 2 min. What will you do separated? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 113 x 138 cm What will you polarized? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano string on wood. 88 x 80 x 8 cm What will you do by screaming? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 140 x 73 cm What will you do drowned? Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on river wood. 110 x 20 cm What will you do, influencer? Iron powder, glass, magnet and iron oxide. 40 cm x variable height What will you do without books? Wood, paper, fabric, piano strings, iron oxide and hydroxide. 23 x 31 cm What will you do muted? Iron oxide and hydroxide, string and piano dampers on canvas on wood. 120 x 80 cm Making of What will you do, muted? - video 7 min. Making of What will you do, screaming? - video 6 min. Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil - video 1 min. Making of Què farás? - video 1 hour

...and to dust you shall return. En proceso - Coming soon - Em breve …and to dust you shall return is a recently started project in which I am using, as pigments for a series of paintings, earths, sands and crushed stones that I have been collecting for decades in places I have traveled throughout my life. Although it is quite advanced conceptually and formally, it is still in the initial phase of production. BPS - Sahara sand, graphite and titanium dioxide on linen. 130 x 81 cm. Wandering through this immense desert, day after day I camp wherever I am when the magical hour of twilight approaches. The deep blues give way to reds, lilacs, grays, and black. In the most profound solitude I have ever known, I prepare my dinner, listen to my music, write, and contemplate the most majestic and bewildering of all skies, which crushes me down on Earth and fills me with a deep sense of insignificance. Like every grain of sand in this vast desert, how tiny and insignificant we are in the Cosmos. Algeria, December 1988 ETHER - audiovisual installation for 4 slide projectors, light and smoke, projected onto the painting "My plans". 5.2 x 1.95 m. ETHER From Latin æthēr and Greek aithēr: sky, firmament, the pure and bright air above. In Sanskrit "akasha", the fifth element, the space in which everything exists, which does not have the firmness of the earth, the freshness of water, the heat of fire, nor the movement of air... The Luminiferous Ether, which the ancients believed to fill the entire dark cosmos and allow light to travel. The very essence of void. Void, in which I find myself, and leads me to the unanswerable question... “the primordial nothingness”, prior to matter, to energy and to everything we have understood or invented. “The nothingness” that redeems me, that places me in my condition of dust, into which everything shall return. That shows me the nonsense of the whole and the whole sense of my brief existence, at peace with our smallness, with our irrelevance, our finitude and free from the search for eternity. Khumbu, December 2024 Work in process Home

Frozen Hoy, cuando la fotografía deja de tener una de sus funciones históricas, la de preservar el pasado y se convierte en herramienta social para enseñar el presente, Frozen (congelado), propone una reflexión sobre lo que hemos tenido, lo que hemos soñado, lo que ya no tenemos y lo que podemos conservar o rescatar de nuestros ideales y nuestras relaciones humanas. A principios de los años ochenta, recibí de Kodak muestras de una nueva película, desarrollada específicamente para fines técnicos y científicos. Realicé varios experimentos y la definición de imagen era la mejor que había visto jamás, pero el contraste era exagerado y por mucho que utilizara procesos ultra compensadores, no conseguí la riqueza tonal que buscaba. Años más tarde, Kodak desarrolló un revelador específico para aplicaciones pictóricas con esta película. Probarlo puso un fin a mis experimentos químicos. Todo lo que yo había buscado siempre en nitidez y riqueza tonal estaba allí. Muy probablemente los científicos de Kodak habían desarrollado su revelador dentro de las mismas bases que yo había estado probando. Fenidona como único agente revelador y sulfito de sodio como antioxidante, pero añadiendo una pequeña cantidad de Benzotriazol como agente anti‐fog, y sus resultados fueron mejores que los míos. Aquello fue un marco en mi relación con la fotografía. Me hizo repensar que buscaba en ella, como medio de expresión, más allá de la técnica y la ciencia. Se acababan los experimentos científicos y aquella se convertiría en mi única película, con pocas variaciones en su revelado, que me permitieran adecuar el contraste a lo que yo quisiera expresar. Cuando Kodak dejó de fabricar esta película, compré todo el estoque disponible en las tiendas de Barcelona. Sabiendo que a veinte grados bajo cero se paraliza el envejecimiento de las emulsiones fotográficas blanco y negro, las guardé en mi congelador, como una reliquia, esperando una ocasión especial. Una década había pasado cuando mi amigo, Manoel Morgado y yo decidimos vivir el antiguo sueño de realizar una travesía invernal en el Himalaya, caminando sobre el río Zanzkar congelado. Durante el mes de enero, el lecho de este río se congela, convirtiéndolo en la ruta invernal utilizada por los Zanzkaris desde hace siglos. Era hora de descongelar película, descongelar el viejo sueño y casi congelarnos a treinta grados bajo cero dentro de un estrecho y sombrío cañón del Himalaya. La película estaba intacta, el sueño seguía vigente, la amistad viva. Pero en realidad, la primera ocasión en la que saqué mi reliquia del congelador fue cuando decidimos Pepe Font de Mora y yo, hacer juntos una travesía en bicicleta por el Sáhara. Era el año 2008, Pepe y yo nos reencontrábamos, después de más de una década sin vernos, sin embargo nuestra amistad seguía intacta y el sueño más vivo que nunca, pero la única fotografía que llegué hacer en aquel viaje discursó sobre el fracaso de un sueño. No del nuestro, sino de otros… desconocidos. Un pequeño punto claro en la llanura desértica nos llamó la atención y nos desviamos de la línea recta que trazábamos a brújula, para averiguar de qué se trataba. Un cuerpo humano en estado parcial de putrefacción yacía eternamente en medio a tanto vacío. Alrededor suyo no había una mochila, un bolso, una simple botella con agua... apenas un par de zapatos dejados unos metros atrás. Lo último de lo que se había despojado. Pensé inmediatamente en aquellos que abandonan sus tierras, sus culturas, sus familias en búsqueda de una vida más digna. Y esta vez fue mi corazón el que se congeló, avasallado por un profundo sentimiento de pena y tristeza, al pensar en aquellos que se quedarán para siempre sin noticias, sin saber si fueron olvidados o si perdieron a un ser querido. Afortunados somos, al poder rescatar sueños, amistades y otras cosas paralizadas en el tiempo. Pero que pequeños somos, al ser conscientes de que la vida no se congela. Quizá, por ello algunos pretendan tanto “congelar el momento”, como se suele decir en fotografía. Yo, no he tenido jamás esta pretensión. Muy pronto - Em breve - Coming soon Home

Luiz Simoes contemporary artist Barcelona +34 619333724 Calle Santa Madrona, 15 Local 9 - Barcelona Rio +5521 974555159 Rua 16, nº28 / 2 Praia de Itaipuaçu. Maricá - Rio de Janeiro luiz@luizsimoes.com www.luizsimoes.com

ViolaMe , left wall - Iron oxide and terracotta in acrylic medium on canvas 5,2 x 2 m. ViolaMe Someday a first human probably said, "This cave is mine". For quite a long time I‘ve been thinking about the idea that violence is not a natural characteristic of humans, as many people say, but it comes as a reaction, facing an unwanted circumstance. When philosophers Luca De Pietri and Giorgio Palma invited me to the event Il Corpo Violato (Violated Body), promoted by ArtPhilein Foundation, in Italy, I felt it was the catalyser of a long-standing project, a video installation in which a character is invaded in his space, bough physically and culturally. The relation between music and culture led me to the idea of merging the name of a musical instrument and the word violence. This was the beginning of ViolaMe (Violate me). El cosa (The thing) is a character who doesn't matter, who represents no one. His face is white and flat, characterless, and it inhabits an environment permeated by its presence. Like a chamber, this room is made up of three large-format paintings that represent it's walls. Using oxidized iron plates, I stamped marks and shapes onto the canvas, and with terracotta, I engraved marks of my own body on the paintings, which are then coated with iron oxide, to the point of nearly disappearing. Four people enter this space pushing a piano, creating a wall that divides the cell in two sides. Noticing the presence of El cosa on the other side, the invaders begin piling books on top of the piano, building an even higher barrier with their culture. Then they bring in three chairs and three violas, and begin tuning their instruments. Feeling invaded, El cosa expresses his discontent with the situation but, but, unable to establish a dialogue, he rejects the invasion by destroying the elements that represent it.. His aggressive behavior, in cresciendo, leading him to feelings of pain and sorrow for himself and his aggressor, is my main concern in Viola-Me, the involuntariness and sadness contained in violence and the apathy of modern society in the face of it. Transcribed from the conference held in Italy on February 7, 2010 when Luiz Simoes was invited by Artphilein Foundation to introduce his projects ViolaMe and Music for 18 things to other artists and philosophers participating in the event Il Corpo Violato. Making of ViolaMe - video 8 minutos The composition Trío for violas and absent piano invites to reflect on the self complacency and ethnocentrism in which we sometimes fall, not only in Western culture but in all others. In the context of the installation ViolaMe, it refers to the contrast created when we shut ourselves in our own values, our own alienation and it becomes a mask that inhibits us from acting and being coherent. The piece is built on a harmonic pattern that is repeated constantly and over which draws a melodic and melancholic line. The central part of the piece allude to contrapuntal procedures that represent the search for roots in the past but, being not resolved in the present, return to the initial pattern, constant, obsessive and distant. Iván Lorenzana Composer 00:00 / 07:08 ViolaMe - obra completa. Video - 7 minutos Apoyo Home

OXIDE It is a beautiful yet simple reflection that a tree grows in two directions. The crown is beautiful, and the roots invisible. What we see, often comes from what is deep, dark, and hidden. The metaphor of oxidation as starting point might seem absurd. We usually associate it with aging, wear and tear, the passage of time. But oxidation should lead us to reflect on what is needed for something to oxidize, and the answer is obvious: oxygen. However, there was a long period in which our atmosphere was toxic and inhospitable to life, until the first living beings began to transform that primitive Precambrian atmosphere, filling it with oxygen through photosynthesis. Therefore, for something to oxidize, it was necessary that something to be born, to exist, in the deepest sense that the word existence can have. A rock, or even the universe as we know it, will cease to exist one day, but being aware of this finitude transforms us into restless reflective beings, full of unanswerable questions, filled with a thirst for knowledge. Óxido is a second interpretation of my most fundamental reflection, which is present throughout my work: existence. It is an extension of my previous project, “Tempo,” begun in 2006 and still unfinished. While “Tempo” is photography and deals with irreversibility, through the idea of photographing with cameras built for a specific situation and which have only a single plate of film, where there is no second chance; “Óxido” is painting, changeable throughout the entire process, from the first to the last line, brushstroke, or shape. It is the desire to believe that yes, we can and must intervene, create destiny, and make our brief existence the moment and place to be and to give our best. Everything has a beginning, everything has an end. To create is to minimize the anguish of knowing this. Perhaps it is a way of not suffering because of it, through reflection, in processes that are like dark and underground roots, invisible to others, but that nourish and shape what we make visible through our thoughts. El Bardo - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and Double Bass Strings on canvas on wood. 300 x 180 cm Paradise, heaven, hell, purgatory, bardo, these are concepts present in various cultures. The search for meaning, for destiny, a place or idea of being eternal. El Bardo is my reflection on the idea that this place is right here, in our simple and limited existence; where our dreams, our ideals, our dramas and conflicts, our questions and our lack of answers, our frustrations and achievements, our effort to be the best we can be, all reside. El Bardo is perhaps the best I've painted to date, possibly the closest result to what I'm aiming for, perhaps one of my works that best represents this moment in my life, so full of true love for what I do and for people who inhabit my life. Over it floats the feeling that much remains to be done; the eternal "And what's yet to come!" while we're here. Empathy - Iron oxide and hydroxide and iron shavings on canvas on wood with magnets. 88 x 100 cm Óxido Nº. 1 - Iron oxide and hydroxide, acrylic and oxidized iron on canvas on wood. 70 x 70 cm Óxido Nº. 2 - Iron oxide and hydroxide and oxidized wire on canvas on wood. 110 x 70 cm Óxido Nº. 3 - Iron oxide and hydroxide, bass string and oxidized iron on canvas on wood. 110 x 70 cm Popocatépetl - Volcanic ash and iron oxide on canvas on wood. 120 x 35 cm Espectróxido - Iron plates, iron oxide and hydroxide, and piano strings on canvas on wood. 150 x 97 cm Espectróxido invertido - Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings on canvas on wood. 150 x 97 cm The Tightrope - Iron oxide, broken abrasive disc on canvas and piano string on iron grid. 64 x 43 cm The Box - Iron oxide and hydroxide and piano strings in an iron box. Sound/sensory installation 230 x 150 x 180 cm Museo Internacional del Barroco, Puebla - México. October / November 2024 Supported by Home

PROST Kunsthalle - Museumsquartier, Vienna. March 2012 Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona. March/June 2015 Still flowing through the Universe, the 160.2GHz electromagnetic wave called the Cosmic Background Radiation is supposedly the echo of the Big Bang. We usually associate the idea of echo with the aftermath of something, but we rarely conceive of it as something prior, as the cause of a new drama that evokes a new reverberation, producing, perhaps, another state and so on. An expanding universe on its way to a new collapse is part of an "evolutionary freedom" that perhaps only in the Downfall will find a way to reborn. Kunsthalle - Museumsquartier. Vienna, March 2012 Joan Miró Foundation. Barcelona, March/June 2015 At a vernissage, guests are drinking glasses of wine (the glass as metaphor for celebration, climax, happiness). In the centre of the room, a glass table with four speakers positioned at the corners is suspended by four steel cables. The speakers reproduce the pleasant sound of resonating glasses. This harmonious sound begins to increase in volume, disturbing the guests. At this point, a warning is heard over the loudspeaker. Your attention please. We inform you that your glass may explode in your hand at any moment. We suggest you leave it on the table. Keeping holding it is up to you and at your own risk. No one will take any responsibility on this. People begin placing their glasses on the table, and the sound shatters some glasses near the speakers. The table, loaded with glasses, slowly begins to rise, pulled by the steel cables. The sound intensifies, and high above, the glass plate, unable to withstand, breaks down. The enormous cascade of broken glasses onto a black wooden board coated with polyester resin, positioned at the impact point. As the resin solidifies, the bright glass fragments stick to the black surface, a metaphor for a new universe, containing order and entropy. PROST Vienna , 2012 - Polyester resin, glass and wine glasses on black stained wood. 210 x 130 cm PROST Barcelona, 2015 - Polyester resin, glass and wine glasses on black stained wood. 260 x 160 cm Small-scale technical rehearsal Support Home

Tempo Muy pronto - Em breve - Coming soon Home

Muy pronto Em breve Coming soon

Music for 18 things In 2006 I presented in Switzerland my audiovisual installation Requiem for 2 Basuróphonos, for which I had built two string instruments similar to a cello and a double bass and I had also composed the music, which surprised some people, since I am neither a musician nor a luthier. But ultimately the final result was a visual work, something I had always done. Years later, I decided to work on a piece that didn't have image as the final result. Something people would not expect from me. Something I knew I was not prepared to do. I decide then to compose a piece of music to be performed by an orchestra with instruments I built myself, questioning what we do with our lives, what we expect from others, or why the first thing we ask when we meet someone is what they do for a living, establishing filters for our social circles. I built the instruments in an unexpected way, questioning also the way we expect things to be, not only the people. I choose to be inspired by the masterpiece of someone I consider to be one of the greatest contemporary composers, Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. In fact I dedicate the work to him, but the work is not the music, nor the instruments, but the fact that I do something I’m not expected to do. As in Reich’s composition, pulse and breathing allude to time and life. The concert begins with a stethoscope with a built in microphone in my chest and my heart beats sounding live, making metronome in the initial part of the work, which is divided into eight sections: pulse, breathing, growth, torment, chaos, harmony, breathing and pulse; drawing an endless circle across being alive, growing and the torment caused by the feeling that growth generates even more questions. Music for 18 things is full of significant elements in my life along the last decades. My expectations, my frustrations and achievements on what I have been doing, what I do and what I still want to do; questioning what we are, with more and more questions each second. Transcript of the conference to which Luiz Simoes was invited by the Artphilein Foundation in February 2010 in Italy to present the projects Music for 18 things and ViolaMe, to the artists and philosophers participating in the event Il Corpo Violato. Miró Foundation. Barcelona, 2019 Interview, 8 minute video Complete work, video 24 minutes Basuróphonos Basso, Mezzo and da Gamba 00:00 / 00:30 Basso and Baritone Tubophonos 00:00 / 00:38 The Crappycordio 00:00 / 00:27 The Hammer 00:00 / 00:08 Maracalata 00:00 / 00:36 Violoca Vidriáphono 00:00 / 00:08 The voice El Tormentophone 00:00 / 00:16 The Wheel 00:00 / 00:19 My heart 00:00 / 00:22 Recording session. La Fontana Auditorium. Barcelona, June 2011 Premiere at the Espace Theater. Italy, 2010 International Museum Day. ARTIUM Museum, Vitoria 2011 Excerpts from essays and the presentation at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, on November 16, 2019, in the context of the exhibition Sound Art? - Video 6 minutes cultural support Home