Solimán López

Solimán López (born in 1981 in Burgos, Spain) is a contemporary conceptual artist and art historian specialized in digital art and new technologies.
He founded the Harddiskmuseum in 2015, a museum of contemporary art in a hard drive that archives more than 100 international digital artworks including those of John Sanborn, Gregory Chatonsky, Enrique Radigales, María Cañas, Jonathan Monaghan, Claudia Hart, Pia_Myrvold.
Solimán López produces his work in the "Innovation and Development" department that he directs at the Escuela Superior de Arte y Tecnología (ESAT) in Valencia, Spain and his studio UAS in Paris.
As a committed artist, he diverts digital tools and techniques created for authoritarian economic or political purposes to create physical or virtual forms that create a completely transparent composite society; the production processes are visible and sometimes merge at work.
Moreover, his Spanish and South American crossbreeding infuses his work with a reappropriation of the concept of "colonization". By taking part in innovation, the artist is one of the actors founding new digital territories. He proposes, thanks to new media, worlds without borders, without discrimination and comes to question universality, public intimacy, reunification or neutrality and beliefs.
Solimán's work has been shown in many museums, galleries, festivals, talk shows, among which the most notable are the following:
*2019 - "Skining" - Solo Exhibition, CEART, Madrid, Spain.
*2019 - "Isea 2019" - Group exhibition, The 25th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Gwangju, South Korea.
*2019 - "Faces" - Group exhibition, ES Baluard Museum, Mallorca, Spain
*2018 - "Key axis" - Individual exhibition, Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos CAB, Burgos, Spain
*2017 - 2018 - "Open code" - Group exhibition, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany.
*2016 - 2017 - "File genesis" - Individual exhibition, Centre Del Carme - Cultura Contemporánea, Valencia, Spain.
== Education and artistic career ==
Living in many cities since his childhood, Solimán's artistic path was first established with a particular relationship between time, distance and space. Latin America, Spain, Bolivia or Johannesburg made him want and need to stay connected with these multiple places, cultures and periods of his life from an early age. Social networks become more than just a communication tool, for Solimán, this space that connects him to others is a world to build, a land where he and his friends can continue to grow together.
After his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Córdoba (Spain), where he obtained a master's degree in Art History, Solimán set up, with a local team, the project Espacio A Rojo, an open workshop for contemporary and social creation and exhibition. After this experience, which ended in 2015, Solimán moved to Valencia, where he collaborated with the Escuela Superior de Arte y Tecnología, ESAT, where he founded the innovation and development laboratory, ESAT LAB, where his pieces have been produced, such as the Harddiskmuseum, Repsat, Celeste or Langpath, among others.
His work as a researcher in the field of new media has been shared in many universities such as Paris College of Art in Paris, France, Fundacion Telefonica in Madrid, Spain, UFSM in Brazil, Carlos III University in Madrid, Google Campus in Madrid, UPV in Valencia, Bancaja Foundation, Injuve, TEDx Valladolid, University of Cuenca, National University of Córdoba, Argentina, MediaLab Prado in Madrid, Technarte Bilbao, among others.
In 2018, the artist moves to Paris where he lives and produces his pieces with his production studio UAS (Updated Art Studio) and the ESAT Lab.
== Selected works and projects ==
Solimán López produces polymorphic pieces related to the social world that interacts with technology. He mainly uses new media and innovation as raw materials.
=== Harddiskmuseum===
Conceived as a tribute to the digital files that are the essence of new media, Solimán's Harddiskmuseumhttps://space.harddiskmuseum.com questions architecture as synonymous with culture. Represented in a 2 Terabyte Western Digital Black Caviar hard disk, the museum universe dedicated solely to digital arts will take shape in 2015 at ESAT, Escuela Superior de Arte y Tecnología de Valencia.
The museum was exhibited for the first time at the Punto de Valencia gallery in the group exhibition ANTS with Hugo Martinez-Tormo, bosch & simons, Antonio Orts, Rafael Lozano Hemmer and Enrique Radigales.
The Harddiskmuseum is exhibited in live sessions such as in Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona (curated by Roberta Bosco) registering its different variants from performance to virtual reality until its 10th edition. The latter presents a new 3D interface that can be visited online24 and whose inauguration took place at the EP7, in 2019 in Paris. This intangible museum is also the theme of Solimán's presentation for TEDx Valladolid in 2015, which mixes reflection on archiving and artistic performance.
=== GRID ===
The work GRID is an immersive visual and sound self-generating installation that constructs an audiovisual symphony in real time thanks to the WIFI signal from nearby mobile devices. The piece investigates the concept of the ubiquity of frequencies, the usurpation of personal data and reification.
The immersive installation was unveiled for the first time at Place de la Bourse in Paris, during the 2019 All-Nighter, and was later installed at the Gerano Perez Museum in Cordoba, Argentina, and at the Parque de Espana Cultural Center in Rosario, Argentina, during a monumental solo show "Presencia " where Solimán presented two immersive installations: GRID and High Meshes.
=== High Meshes ===
High Meshes is the creation of a micro community of real people scanned in 3D by photogrammetry. This information constitutes a database that feeds an artificial intelligence software. The latter gathers the bodies according to their purely digital information without taking into account racial, sexual, religious, political or cultural issues.
There are two stages in the production of High Meshes. The first is a monumental installation that aims to photogrammetre naked, the voluntary subjects. An approach that speaks of collective intimacy and digital birth. The installation is a cocoon of organic colors that invites the viewer to record the reliefs of his body. By assembling these individuals whose othernesses take on a trigonometric meaning here, Solimán López comes, in a second step, to compose new forms thanks to AI, demonstrating the possibility of a world without discrimination.
The artist's new utopian communities composed of more than 150,000,000 polygons are exhibited from different angles, these new geometric volumes devoid of any soul question the exhibition of new creatures in history. The physical displacement around and within the material introduces the spectator sometimes as a voyeur, sometimes as a witness, or sometimes taking the role of the mad scientist in his virtual laboratory. The piece High Meshes proposes a poetic immersion in Virtual Reality, 3D, impressions, augmented reality or immersive installations.
This work has been exhibited at the CCCC - Cultural Center of Contemporary Art del Carme in Valencia, Spain, at the festival Barcú in Bogotá, Colombia and by the Ellia Art Gallery in Paris, France.
=== Celeste ===
Solimán Lopez gathers the skies of different cities around the world and displays the colorimetric variations of these unions.
Thanks to an equipped beacon, hardware necessary to capture the image of the sky in real time, the system extracts the colors obtained and combines them in a digital interface that can be visited at celeste.solimanlopez.com . During the night, in any of the locations, the system goes into "sleep" mode, accessing a database of images of ideal skies mixed with color alterations.
Celeste is installed in several contemporary art centers such as Véles e Vents in Valencia, Spain, La Lonja Alicante Spain, the Scan Room in London, UK and Mi Gallery in Paris.
The project is, in March 2020, the "icon" of the Spanish film festival in Bogota, Colombia, VIII Muestra de Cine Español (MCE) where the work now unites the skies of Madrid to several cities in Colombia. The beacons being placed at the Casa America in Madrid, as well as at El Planetario in Bogotá, La Tertulia Museum in Cali and El Parque Explora in Medellín. The festival, due to the international epidemic of Covid-19, is postponed, but the work is still installed and exhibited on the web.
=== Files Genenis ===
Files Genesis is a series of marble sculptures housing memory cards in which 3D images are "hidden". Data as an intangible material creates a living dimension to the massive stone. For each of their exhibitions, Solimán López reveals their contents differently. For the eponymous exhibition, the artist has generated a software to cross the information of the 8 sculptures, giving birth to new contents contrasting more with the tomb aspect of the glyptics.
The self-generating installation was exhibited in the Contemporary Art Center Del Carme in Valencia, Spain, in Etopia, Art and Technology Center, Saragossa Spain, in the Bienal Némo, Variation Art Fair curated by Dominique Moulon in the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France and in the MI Gallery in the solo show "The Recollector ", curated by Carlos Sánchez Bautista Paris, France.
=== Bioma ===
Bioma is an intelligent sculpture that generates identity images in real time. By placing itself in front of its "eye", the machine retrieves the spectator's colorimetric and sound inputs and creates an abstract interpretation of them, creating an absolutely original and updated identity that can be directly uploaded on a social network. As ready to use, the unique code printed on the receipt that comes out of the belly of the sculpture opposes the concept of authenticity linked to the work of art and over-production of multiple identities (selfies, profile photos ...) uploaded on the canvas. The graphic result is obtained thanks to an artificial intelligence, the random mode is to Bioma what subjectivity is to humans, questioning the relationship between the photographic tool, the software and the definition of their boundaries.
Bioma has been exhibited at Mi Gallery during the solo show "The Recollector" in Paris, France, at the Es Baluard Museum, Majorca, Spain, at Cigarreras, Alicante, Spain and at the Digital Media Design Education International Forum in Shanghai, China.
=== The runner ===
The runner is a process. Avatars run in an infinite space. Metaphor of invisible energy, the interface gives life to numbers that increase symbolizing the growth that this activity generates. The spectator can interact and modify the growth by playing the game of these moving digital flayers.
The runner has been exhibited in Madrid at CEART Fuenlabrada in its solo show "Skinning" and at Palacio la Prensa , in Spain, in Colombia for the Barcú festival in Bogotá, and at Port Authority in New York, United States of America.
=== Langpath ===
Langpath is a kinetic sculpture that represents the energy needed to transfer files. It is a digital balance; the movement of the blades of the physical sculpture is powered by the transfers of BVH data (hierarchical biovision files) in real time. The migration of data from a dedicated server located in the north-western hemisphere to another in the south-west generates the trajectory of another file located in a south-eastern server to a north-eastern server. This back and forth is a balanced flow transfer in an infinite oscillation. The force required to move the screens of this steel sculpture highlights the energy required to generate these data migrations and assigns the weight of the byte to the heaviness of the analog system on which it depends.
The piece was exhibited at the Digital Art, Biennial at Espacio OI Futuro Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at the Museu de Arte de Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
=== Bounding box=== 
In collaboration with Fito Segrera, Bounding box is an installation created with motion capture data, customized software and hardware, whose goal is to convey a sense of human presence, a digitized body that rematerializes itself as analog sound.
When a virtual skeleton crosses the boundaries of its virtual bounding box, the physical wooden box reacts in the same area where a digital collision occurs. This mechanical reaction is due to several actuators (solenoids) installed inside the box. These systems evoke a kind of tele-presence in space, blurring the boundaries between virtual and physical environments. In addition, a projection with real-time visual data obtained from the digital joints of the skeleton highlights where and when the boundary box is cut off by the digital presence.
Exhibited at the Chronus Art Center, Shanghai in China
== Exhibitions ==
=== Personal exhibitions ===
* 2020 - Celeste V2 - Madrid/Colombia.
* 2019 - Look At. Barcu, Bogota. Colombia.
* 2019 - Skinning. CEART, Fuenlabrada. Madrid. Spain,.
* 2019 - High Meshes. CCCC. Valencia. Spain.
* 2019 - The Runner. Callao. Madrid. Spain.
* 2019 - The Runner V.2. Port Authority. New York. EE.UU
* 2018 - Subsurface. EP7 Paris. France.
* 2018 - Bounding Box. Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, China.
* 2018 - Waterfly Effect. CAB, Burgos. Spain.
* 2018 - Key Axis. CAB, Burgos. Spain.
* 2018 - Waterfly Effect. Espacio Lab. Rosario, Argentina.
* 2017 - CELESTE, SCAN ROOM London. UK.
* 2017 - Bridges to Steganos. Internet Moon Gallery. Netart.
* 2017 - File Genesis. Etopia Art for Art and Technology. Zaragoza
* 2017 - CELESTE. Veles e Vents. Valencia.
* 2017 - The ReCollector. Mi* Galerie. Paris.
* 2017 - CELESTE. Point Ephémère. Paris.
* 2017 - File Genesis. Centre del Carmen. Valencia.
* 2017 - Harddiskmuseum. Arts Santa Monica. Barcelona
* 2016 - File Genesis. Centre del Carmen. Valencia
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum Live Session V.06. MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum Live Session V.05. Museo de BBAA Palacio Evita Ferreyra, Córdoba, Argentina.
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum Live Session V.04. Museo de BBAA y Artistas Contemporáneos Timoteo Navarro, Tucumán, Argentina.
* 2016 - Gutenberg Discontinuity. UNESP. Campus Assis. Brazil.
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum. Live Session V.03. Desing+ Art, Science and Technology. UFSM. Santa María. Brazil.
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum Live Session V.02. Technarte, Bilbao.
* 2016 - More than 404. Online art action.
* 2016 - Harddiskmuseum Live Session V.01. Las Naves Centro de Creación Contemporánea.
* 2016 - Tecnometrías. IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno)
* 2014 - Gutenberg Discontinuity avec Ruben Tortosa, Nilo Casares et Miguel Martinez. Festival Intramurs. Centro Museo del Carmen. Valencia.
* 2014 - Gutenberg Discontinuity avec Ruben Tortosa, Nilo Casares et Miguel Martinez. Festival Z Jornadas de A C. Espacio urbano. Córdoba.
* 2014 - Gutenberg Discontinuity avec Ruben Tortosa, Nilo Casares et Miguel Martinez. Summa Art Fair. Matadero Madrid.
* 2014 - Tecnometrías. CAC Málaga.
* 2013 - SPAM. ARTSPACE BASEL SWITZERLAND.
* 2013 - Gutenberg Discontinuity. Festival Estoquees. Facultad BBAA Granada.
* 2013 - Gutenberg Discontinuity. Sala Orive. Córdoba.
* 2013 - Re-Set. Mercouri Estate Residency. Greece Create an Accident project.
* 2012 - Link to. Atocha. Madrid.
* 2012 -“Wannabe”. Laboratorio de artes de Valladolid. LAVA.
* 2012 -“Follow Us”. Madatac04. Centro de Cultura y Ciudadanía Cibeles, Madrid.
* 2011 -“Balas”, Noche Blanca del Flamenco. Bulevar Gran Capitán. Córdoba.
* 2011 - “Plenty”, Estación Central de Renfe. Córdoba.
* 2011 - “Time moves threads”, Bullit de Blau Gallery. Ibiza.
* 2011 - “Diversiones, “video juegos”.Biblioteca Central. Córdoba.
* 2010 - Nothing to say. Festival Óptica. Filmoteca Andalucía. Córdoba.
* 2009 - Worldwide Cube. Eutopía Festival.
=== Collectives exhibition ===
* 2020 - Urvanity art fair. Madrid
* 2020 - Virtual Archipielago. Re-act. Online.
* 2019 - Nuit Blanche. Place de la Bourse. Paris. France.
* 2019 - FACES, Es Baluard. Mallorca. Spain
* 2019 - Primitivo, Casa Hoffmann. Bogotá. Colombia.
* 2019 - ISEA2019. Gwangju. South Korea.
* 2018 - FAD Bienal de Arte Digital. Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte (Brazil)
* 2018 - Open Codes, ZKM. Karlsruhe (Germany)
* 2018 - Wrong Biennial.
* 2018 - Todo lo que ves es arte. La Lonja d’Alicante(Spain)
* 2017 - Intervalo. Cigarreras. Alicante (Spain)
* 2017 - Vartiations Media Art Fair. Paris (France)
* 2017 - Open Codes, ZKM. Karlsruhe (Germany)
* 2017 - Les Horribles Cernetes. Festival Zedre. Centro el Carmen de Cultura Contemporánea.
* 2017 - Harddiskmuseum. Foro ARCO´17. Madrid.
* 2016 - Proyector International Videoart Festival. Espacio Nadie Nunca Nada No.
* 2016 - Technarte Bilbao. Harddiskmuseum.
* 2016 - UPHO Festival. Málaga.
* 2016 - JustTech en JustMad7. Artista invitado. Galería Punto.
* 2016 - El barco de Teseo. Universidad de León. España.
* 2016 - El barco de Teseo. CCE Nicaragua.
* 2016 - El barco de Teseo. CCE El Salvador.
* 2016 - El barco de Teseo. CCE Mexico.
* 2015 - El barco de Teseo. Sala Amadis. Madrid.
* 2015 - ANT. Arte y Naturalezas Tecnológicas. Galería Punto. Valencia.
* 2015 - Festival MIA. Chicago and Pasadena.
* 2015 - Sustratos. IVAM. (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno).
* 2014 - EspacioEnter. Tenerife.
* 2014 - Au pie de la montagne. Flores do Cabo Gallery. Sintra. Portugal.
* 2014 - Iberart. Museo ABC. Madrid.
* 2014 - Iberart. Palacio de Exposiciones de Castilla y León.
* 2014 - Summa Art Fair. Punto Gallery Valencia.
* 2013 - Festival Videoarte Camagüey (Cuba)
* 2013 - Iberart. Museo del Grabado Fuendetodos. Zaragoza.
* 2012 - Bienal arte Emergente “El legado cinético” MAC Venezuela. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas.
* 2012 - Videolooking, Hospitalet. Barcelona. “Charco”, Buenos Aires Oculto. Buenos Aires.
* 2011 - “Carpets”, Space 16 Asas. Córdoba. Madatac, Matadero (Madrid).
* 2011 - Horizontal/Vertical. ICAS. Sevilla.
* 2010 - “Laguna Awards”. Valladolid.
* 2010 - Rei en Jaume Awards. Mallorca.
* 2010 - Festival BAC ́10. Galería Zero. Barcelona. Óptica Festival. Córdoba.
* 2008 - Futura. Festival Periferias. Huesca. ArtTechMedia. Córdoba
== Solimán López in the Media ==
<youtube width="300" height="300">VZ_RI3g6Un4</youtube>  
<youtube width="300" height="300">aTkZ8p1XXi4</youtube>  
== References ==
== External Links ==
* Official website
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
Category:1981 births
Category:Contemporary artists
Category:Art historians
Category:Spanish art historians
Category:People from Burgos
Category:Conceptual artists
Category:Spanish conceptual artists