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Horacio Warpola illuminates Mexico Design Fair with stroboscopic lights and electrical storms
Horacio Warpola’s light installation
Image: Mónica Garrido
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Horacio Warpola illuminates Mexico Design Fair with stroboscopic lights and electrical storms

The installation is the first digital art piece displayed at the contemporary Mexican design fair.

by Almas Sadique
Published on : Jun 16, 2022

From amongst a flurry of national and international design fairs and events, Mexico Design Fair stands out for holding exhibits and showcasing installations that are unequivocally Mexican in style and taste, and that serve as harbingers of the contemporary age for Mexican design. Inaugurated in 2021 with the objective of promoting contemporary Mexican art and design and reinforcing its position at the global stage, the design event was curated like an exhibition that displayed both small and large scale installations and products and provided space for discussions as well as acquisition of displayed items.

Its second edition ran from May 20 to May 22, 2022 at a beachfront vacation home in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. Curated by designer and architect Carlos Torre Hütt, it featured the works of more than 20 designers and around 13 galleries and brands. Although thematically Mexican, it welcomed several international designers, whose works interacted with Mexican offerings to create a unique exposition. An installation that especially stood out, due to its size, experimental nature and usage of latest technological offerings was a live coding performance by Horacio Warpola. “I was able to create a sort of poetic landart that in darkness and silence (except for the crashing waves) provoked a contemplative experience where stones, light, salt water, sand, wind, breeze and lumens did their own work,” shared Warpola about his digital architecture installation.

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The fair’s location is surrounded by lush greenery Image: Jaime Navarro
horacio-warpola-illuminates-mexico-design-fair-with-stroboscopic-lights-and-electrical-storms
Inclusion of large scale architectural installations at this year’s MDF Image: Jaime Navarro

Warpola’s lighting installation was an interactive one, integrating the rocks and boulders of Mexico Design Fair’s main venue, Casa Naila, and its surroundings, as well. It served as an attempt to include architecture as part of the design discipline. This installation highlighted certain parts of the fair that displayed Mexican art and design, while also creating optical illusions in the natural setting of the event. In doing so, it managed to pay homage to digital art practices that have recently spurred up and attracted attention across the globe. “I’ve been working with rocks and minerals for some time now, and in the process a relationship between this and technology, poetry and digitality has developed,” he explained. Stationed at Casa Naila, the vicinity of which is dotted with beautiful Mexican architecture and large expanses dedicated to natural entities, Warpola had designed his site-specific showcase keeping in mind the water, architecture and greenery around it. The result was a space that resembled a vacation spot dotted with the best of Mexican design.

Warpola, when commissioned by Mexico Design Fair to create a digital installation, decided to make use of the expansive space and beautiful scenery that he was provided with. Making proper use of the gigantic boulders and rocks lying against one another by the ocean, he oriented his projections on this naturally available screen. The visuals projected on them helped enhance or change their appearance, helping thus in the reinterpretation of these objects through lighting. Additionally, Warpola also pointed his specially designed lights towards areas of the fair that demanded to be seen, in order to provoke further reflections about them and around them. In doing so, his installation not only stood tall as an individual entity, but also managed to bring to focus the items displayed along the beach.

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The lit up venue of the fair resembled a Mexican party Image: Mónica Garrido
horacio-warpola-illuminates-mexico-design-fair-with-stroboscopic-lights-and-electrical-storms
Lighting items on view during the two-day event Image: Jaime Navarro

Using two coding and generative softwares, namely Blender and Hydra, and a group of rendered images, Warpola put together a series of thunderstorms that featured as part of his installation and washed the spaces with hues of whites, blues, reds and some iridescence. Adding to the designer’s advantage were the natural features that bordered his installation. In a naturally charged and intoxicating environment, catalysed further by naturalistic lighting and curated visuals, the response from the visitors of the fair was free flowing and spontaneous. Another feature that prompted a reaction from the audience were the questions projected on the rocks. With the aim of highlighting how a boulder that occupies a certain amount of space can interfere with a person’s material language, these prompts were simple, leaving enough space for the viewer to formulate thought and their own resulting questions.

The Mexico Design Fair was on view from 20 May to 22 May 2022 in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.

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