NERVE CENTER is an immersive multi sensorial art installation that serves as a tangible portal for TLaloC’s ongoing “Elgreen Project” -Ficciones Series- architectural landscapes.The exhibition space, invites the audience to a liminal dark space full of unidentifiable strange glowing elements; engulfed in a peculiar sweet scent that aims to transport the viewer to another time and place. NERVE CENTER was made possible by the Central Baltimore Partnership with generous support from The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund - creator of the Baker Artist Awards, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and The Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.

A site-specific exhibition taking place at Gallery ICA Baltimore, and extends over the entirety of the North Avenue Market space, including a giant storage area full of detritus, a labyrinth-like basement, and an abandoned bowling alley. It is experienced in a pitch dark environment only lightened by the artwork itself. Coupled with fog, scents, sound, and projected videos, it creates a multi-sensory experience that offers a post-apocalyptic vision of Baltimore’s architecture, history and future. The exhibition is a direct allusion to the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The experience is allegorical to the story, intended to show the exact point where his world and mine converge.

"This immersive experience invites the viewer to dive into a world that seems to have devoured the construction of the gallery itself, even transgressing its limits. Its presence bleeds through to places outside of the gallery, sometimes even opening portals to spaces never seen before."

Orbis Tertius -Hlaer-to-Jangr- is TLaloC's fifth solo exhibition (his first in the United States) and is intended to contain the breadth of his interdisciplinary work. The exhibition contents make use of different processes and materials such as sculpture, illustration, animation, installation, neon, and light artworks, which work together to create a multi-sensory and otherworldly experience.

Based on the unknown alphabet that stems from the ongoing Elgreen Project universe; these "strange letters" take shape in sculptural forms, shining a light that reveals a deeper mystery.

I created these sculptural light boxes channeling Robert Indiana's words sculptures

This vector illustration is based on Borges story “Funes el Memorioso.” Is the tale of one Ireneo Funes, who, after falling off his horse and receiving a bad head injury, acquired the amazing talent (or curse) of remembering absolutely everything. This illustration is intended to capture Irineo’s life seen through his eyes; simultaneously observing his past, his present, and even his future.
 

El "Zahir" is a vector illustration based on the renown Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges story; “El Zahir” from “El Aleph” book of short stories. It is part of the ongoing Elgreen Project "FICCIONES" Series; based on visual allegories to Jorge Luis Borges work and created to inform Elgreen Project universe singular aesthetics.

In this image I wanted to illustrate the ill-fated moment when an unfortunate character falls in to the spell of the Zahir (taking the shape of a strange sundial sculpture in this personal illustrated version) for the first time.

According to Borges, "Zahir" is a person or an object that has the power to create an obsession in everyone who sees it, so that the affected person perceives less and less of reality and more and more of the Zahir, at first only while asleep, then at all times.

In Borges short story, the Zahir takes the shape of a coin; but the history tells that it manifested previously as a tiger, an astrolabe, the bottom of a well, and a vein in a marble column in a mosque. According to the myth, everything on earth has the propensity to be a Zahir, but "the Almighty does not allow more than one thing at a time to be it, since one alone can seduce multitudes."

Through this image I intend to evoque the smell of wet pavement through the allegory of rain, resulting in a tangible scene; depicting a sense of serene melancholy, loneliness and dread, in an unknown and ominous place.

“Others will dream that I am mad, and I [will dream] of the Zahir. When all men on earth think day and night of the Zahir, which one will be a dream and which a reality, the earth or the Zahir?”

Representational artifact of "Copulation and mirrors are abominable" + The "Invisible Neighbor and the Cone," excerpts from Jorge Luis Borges short story: Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius"

Jorge Luis Borges: Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius

Excerpts in Spanish:

"Copulation and mirrors are abominable" 

"Debo a la conjunción de un espejo y de una enciclopedia el descubrimiento de Uqbar. El espejo inquietaba el fondo de un corredor en una quinta de la calle Gaona, en Ramos Mejía; la enciclopedia falazmente se llama The Anglo-American Cyclopaedía (New York, 1917) y es una reimpresión literal, pero también morosa, de la Encyclopaedia Britannica de 1902. El hecho se produjo hará unos cinco años. Bioy Casares había cenado conmigo esa noche y nos demoró una vasta polémica sobre la ejecución de una novela en primera persona, cuyo narrador omitiera o desfigurara los hechos e incurriera en diversas contradicciones, que permitieran a unos pocos lectores -a muy pocos lectores- la adivinación de una realidad atroz o banal. Desde el fondo remoto del corredor, el espejo nos acechaba. Descubrimos (en la alta noche ese descubrimiento es inevitable) que los espejos tienen algo monstruoso. Entonces Bioy Casares recordó que uno de los heresiarcas de Uqbar había declarado que los espejos y la cópula son abominables, porque multiplican el número de los hombres. Le pregunté el origen de esa memorable sentencia y me contestó que The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia la registraba, en su artículo sobre Uqbar. La quinta (que habíamos alquilado amueblada) poseía un ejemplar de esa obra. En las últimas páginas del volumen XLVI dimos con un artículo sobre Upsala; en las primeras del XLVII, con uno sobre Ural-Altaic Languages, pero ni una palabra sobre Uqbar. Bioy, un poco azorado, interrogó los tomos del índice. Agotó en vano todas las lecciones imaginables: Ukbar, Ucbar, Ookbar, Oukbahr… Antes de irse, me dijo que era una región del Irak o del Asia Menor. Confieso que asentí con alguna incomodidad. Conjeturé que ese país indocumentado y ese heresiarca anónimo eran una ficción improvisada por la modestia de Bioy para justificar una frase. El examen estéril de uno de los atlas de Justus Perthes fortaleció mi duda.

Al día siguiente, Bioy me llamó desde Buenos Aires. Me dijo que tenía a la vista el artículo sobre Uqbar, en el volumen XXVI de la Enciclopedia. No constaba el nombre del heresiarca, pero sí la noticia de su doctrina, formulada en palabras casi idénticas a las repetidas por él, aunque -tal vez- literariamente inferiores. Él había recordado: Copulation and mirrors are abominable. El texto de la Enciclopedia decía: Para uno de esos gnósticos, el visible universo era una ilusión o (más precisamente) un sofisma. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables (mirrors and fatherhood are hateful) porque lo multiplican y lo divulgan. Le dije, sin faltar a la verdad, que me gustaría ver ese artículo. A los pocos días lo trajo. Lo cual me sorprendió, porque los escrupulosas índices cartográficos de la Erdkunde de Ritter ignoraban con plenitud el nombre de Uqbar.

El "Cono"

Ocurrió unos meses después, en la pulpería de un brasilero, en la Cuchilla Negra. Amorim y yo regresábamos de Sant’Anna. Una creciente del río Tacuarembó nos obligó a probar (y a sobrellevar) esa rudimentaria hospitalidad. El pulpero nos acomodó unos catres crujientes en una pieza grande, entorpecida de barriles y cueros. Nos acostamos, pero no nos dejó dormir hasta el alba la borrachera de un vecino invisible, que alternaba denuestos inextricables con rachas de milongas -más bien con rachas de una sola milonga. Como es de suponer, atribuimos a la fogosa caña del patrón ese griterío insistente… A la madrugada, el hombre estaba muerto en el corredor. La aspereza de la voz nos había engañado: era un muchacho joven. En el delirio se le habían caído del tirador unas cuantas monedas y un cono de metal reluciente, del diámetro de un dado. En vano un chico trató de recoger ese cono. Un hombre apenas acertó a levantarlo. Yo lo tuve en la palma de la mano algunos minutos: recuerdo que su peso era intolerable y que después de retirado el cono, la opresión perduró. También recuerdo el círculo preciso que me grabó en la carne. Esa evidencia de un objeto muy chico y a la vez pesadísimo dejaba una impresión desagradable de asco y de miedo. Un paisano propuso que lo tiraran al río correntoso. Amorim lo adquirió mediante unos pesos. Nadie sabía nada del muerto, salvo “que venía de la frontera”. Esos conos pequeños y muy pesados (hechos de un metal que no es de este mundo) son imagen de la divinidad, en ciertas religiones de Tlön.

The Ruins of Future "Reactor" is the first installment of  illustrations for the ongoing “Elgreen Project” universe, that shows the rise and fall of the civilization that once inhabited this world.

In this small visual narrative, we can see a thriving city full of anthropomorphic characters, just moments before a catastrophic event takes place. In this series of juxtaposed illustrations, I’m showing in a fraction of seconds: the “Ruins of future”, a “before and after” image of time passing by, obliterating everything behind; leaving a dilapidated city. A husk.

This illustration serves as a metaphorical representation of time, and works as a reminder of how everything always comes to an end. 

Explorations for "Barloss:" Pivotal unknown artifact in Elgreen Project's -Ficciones Series- Based on Jorge Luis Borges short story: Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius"

 

3 Tangible solutions (Aluminum, Concrete, and Screenprint) for three of the recurrent objects that populate Elgreen Project Universe: "Barloss, Phillox and Vonbraun"
 

Elgreen Project is an exploration of the human fascination with the unknown, driven by an instinctive and playful reinterpretation of nostalgia. It is inspired by the curious search for obsolete man-made objects that serve as tangible links to an era in a distant past. This translates into the ongoing creation of a collection of mysterious artifacts with no identifiable function or certifiable existence. They are reminiscent if old appliances, tools, and forgotten contraptions. Every one of these artifacts is named, numbered, catalogued and given life. This is how they become part of Elgreen Project. This is a universe populated by fictional art objects disguised as toys that come together to create dream-like environments open to free interpretation by the viewer.