Alejandro Vega
Beuvrin

Is geometry a constraint or a freedom for you — and has that answer ever changed?

I understand geometry as the study of form, and form as a language capable of communicating experience. Inert objects and living beings communicate through formal patterns, and the brain classifies them instantly, we are programmed to do it even with shapes we have never seen before. My work centers on recognizing and using those patterns, proportion, symmetry, scale, whether something reads as a threat or not, but I do it without directly citing any particular being. Geometry has never felt like a constraint, to me it is a territory that deserves to be explored, and that exploration deepens with time, each piece teaches me something the next one can say. It is that accumulated exploration that today allows me to pursue something as specific as the friction of seeing an evidently inert object that transmits, through its form, the sensation of standing before something that evokes a living referent, something that is still but holds the tension of the instant before movement.

Walk us through your process — where does a piece begin, and how do you know it's finished?

A piece begins with a point, followed by another, and between the two a line appears on its own. With at least three points in digital space I construct a plane, and to that plane I apply basic operations, repetition, mirror, scale... There is no formula dictating when to apply each one, those decisions are intuitive, and from that interaction of two-dimensional planes in a three-dimensional virtual space, the form emerges. There the plane can be a compositional element in itself, something material nature does not allow, in the physical world every plane has thickness, it is already a volume. Those constructions belong to another nature. Then comes materialization, and with it another layer of decisions just as determining, the material to be cut, the finish of its surface, the interaction with whoever walks around it and with the space it inhabits, the incidence of light. You could say the digital work is the birth, and materialization is the life. I know a piece is finished when it communicates the intention of the system as a whole. Though finished does not mean closed, I often pick up a piece exactly where it ended and another is born from there. It strikes me as an analogy of evolution, where something ends a new version of the same thing begins, and after multiple variants something entirely new appears.

Is there something outside of art — a system, structure, or phenomenon — that quietly shapes how you think about form?

La guarimba. In Venezuela that is the name for the improvised barricade that civil society raises in the street for protection during protests. It is a structure without an author, made of whatever is at hand, rubble, fences, furniture, and yet it fulfills its function with precision, to be refuge and barrier against the forces of repression. That phenomenon shaped my way of thinking about form more than any artistic reference. The Barricada (Guarimba) series was born from a dilemma, I wanted to make public art and the first commission came from the worst possible client, the very apparatus of that repression. The answer was a trap, I conceived protective structures disguised as abstract art, designed to wait in the street for the precise moment of being activated, when besieged protesters would need them as shields. The disguise was tailored to the one paying for it, and it worked, the first pieces were financed by the same people who persecuted what the pieces concealed. They still hold that condition today, even installed in contexts where no one would suspect their origin, hidden inside each one is la guarimba, waiting to be activated.

What does a viewer miss when they see your work as 'just geometry'?

They miss everything, and that is precisely the design. The pieces were conceived to be seen as simple geometry, their survival depended on it. So that unsuspecting gaze is not a misunderstanding, it is the disguise fulfilling its function, the trap operating in the present tense. Every person who passes a piece and sees only form confirms that the secret is still safe, even now that I am telling it.

What's the last rule you set for yourself in the work, and did you keep it?

I try not to work with rules, I prefer to keep the process open. I recognize a single standard, that I like the result. Said like that it sounds arbitrary, but it is the opposite, that taste is a scrutiny dictated by years of experience and aesthetic rigor, a filter that grows more demanding with each piece. Many correct forms do not pass it, technically impeccable, conceptually justifiable, and yet something in them fails to convince the eye. That is the only rule I always keep, and I would not know how to write it down, it operates only in the act of looking.