Eduardo Pla: a perfect visual creator of the immediate future
by Pierre Restany The double globalisation, both economic and cultural, that accompanies us into the third millennium indelibly marks the fate of the electronic image, as far as the fluidity of communication is concerned. Indissolubly linked to the relentless development of information technology and to its role in the globalisation process, the electronic image confirms its supremacy in the visual field through the evanescent and ephemeral nature of its support, the television screen. We are at the end of a long process that will drastically affect our perceptive structures and our entire existential condition. We are witnessing the consolidation of a new profile of civilization based on electronics and biotechnology, a civilization of virtual reality, of a worldwide trend living a hybrid condition, wavering between natural and artificial lives. The power of the media, as a determining factor in this revolution, bases itself upon the superior communicative power of the image in motion, as opposed to the traditional static means of information. The pre-eminence of the moving image puts an end to the age-old monopoly of the static image. The notion of "art" stems from the first cave paintings, and has remained linked ever since to the notion of "information" through its different types of support: from the walls of temples to the altarpieces of churches, as well as the palaces of noblemen. Printing and easel painting created diversity and hierarchy among the supports, and contributed to the advent of graphic art, considered superior to general information products and inferior to painting at large. From Gutenberg to Niepce, neither the static status of the image, its monopoly of information and the cultural differentiation of the supports changed. With the arrival of photography, the fate of modern image modifies itself, as it incorporates itself into the global flow of communication, dragging art with it. The evolution towards a cultural alliance between art and information is accentuated by the invention of the cinema, television and video. The presence of the media, created to the rhythm of the electronic technology of information becomes all-powerful. The laser endows the new image with a third dimension and a virtual reality, the computer, intelligently used, substitutes the pencil or the paintbrush while Internet becomes our planetary memory. The term “electronic art”, labelled as such from the beginning of the 60s, and which includes video, holography, numerical photography, virtual reality installations and digital art, does not constitute, as many conservative spirits believed at the time, the folklore of electronics. Rather, it is the art of the present and the future, in its capacity as supreme transmitter of present-day global communication and must face an essential challenge: to retain its humanistic functions in order to preserve the normalcy of the new human condition, wavering between the real and the virtual. In this multimedia artistic climate, Eduardo Pla´s versatile personality stands out: this Italian-Argentine artist perfectly represents the model of the present-day artist in the realm of audiovisual communication. Born in Buenos Aires in 1952, he is twenty years younger than Nam June Paix, the creator of video art in 1965. He graduates in 1970 with a degree in Electronic Communication, and continues to perfect himself in this field up to 1990. In Buenos Aires, Los Angeles and Milan he takes courses in architecture, urban design, audiovisual communication, theatre, cinema, video, computer graphics, multimedia and virtual reality. Simultaneously, Pla undertakes a career that enables him to organize cultural events, and produces films, videos and digital work.  Between 1970 and 1978 Pla achieves many short, medium and full-length films. Some are documentaries, such as “Up Art”, “Pop Art” and “Images of Buenos Aires”; some are fiction, as is the case of “Alice in Wonderland”. “Mid-summer Night's Dream” is his first 60-minute colour video, and at the beginning of the '80s, he presents a series of videos in Italy, especially at the Museum of Ferrara, which at the time is the summit of electronic art in Italy. As of 1985, Pla becomes a real one-man band of electronic communication. His first three-dimensional digital painting, "The Arcimboldo Effect" was awarded the Prize of Excellence in Computer Art in New York. His encounter with Alessandro Mendini proves to be decisive, as it leads Eduardo Pla towards digital creative design. Mendini imagines for Alessi a collection of ten thousand vases: a hundred vases for each of the hundred creators, all of them costing the same amount. Eduardo Pla is in charge of the design of one of the models as well as of the presentation of the collection´s catalogue in a video version. Two other collections follow: the Alchimia Collection (1984) and the Falstaf Collection (1994). The former is a complete collection of furniture, carpets and objects, conceived on the basis of a spherical structure and achieved by computer in three dimensions. This allows the collection to be visualized before its industrial production. The latter consists of a montage of virtual images stemming from electronically treated photographs. The catalogue starts out with a digital portrait of the great Italian designer, sitting on one of his favourite Proust armchairs. With a smiling face, he presents one of his Alessi pans: "Mendini with his creation", a real symbol highlighting the Falstaf Alessi packaging. Eduardo Pla, the imaginative artist of electronics, easily wanders from industrial or textile design to compositions and portraits of digital art where he obtains extraordinary fractal effects, reminiscent of Dionysian or Christ-like mysteries, of digital Pre-Raphaelite moods, of floral microcosms. No subject escapes him: from the fascination of childhood and the magic of his interactive games to the eroticism of tango. Yet it is through his installations that the artist, akin to a brilliant director, achieves the most forceful effects, as “Videoworld” (Recoleta Cultural Centre, 1995, Buenos Aires), “The Cascade of Stars” (Buenos Aires, 1996), or “The Thousand Faces of Christ and Mary” (Villa Meda Milan, 2000) so eloquently demonstrate. I have a particularly interesting anecdote concerning an installation by Pla in Venice in 1998. On occasion of the first edition of the Open, an annual exhibition of sculptures in the open air that took place at the Lido at the moment of the opening of the Film Festival, its founder Paolo de Grandis had called me to preside over the Scientific Committee. Together we decided to invite Eduardo Pla to represent Argentina at the Open. Some time later, we witnessed the arrival of “Eschermania”, a 216 square meter aluminium octahedron decorated with an array of yellow, red and blue flying fish printed on vinyl as a tribute to the Dutch artist on the centennial of his death. The colossal object was placed upon one of its sides, on the terrace that looks down onto the pier of the Excelsior Hotel. At first the public was surprised, but then broke out in applause, performing the symbolic greeting of the Open 1 Exhibition. For the Open 4 of the year 2001, we thought of Pla again, as we wished for him to represent his country in Venice. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain his Fractal Tango, as it wasn´t available. Instead, Open 4 will display another computer design installation. It consists of two spheres of a plastic material whose surface is covered with the designs created for the Alchimia Collection. Alchimia in Venice: the renowned symbol of post-modernism, present at the Lido through Pla's spherical installation. Presently, the artist is concentrating on two projects: on the one hand his digital mosaics portraying famous Argentine characters, and on the other, his urban installations based on spheres. Eduardo Pla, the versatile creator of the electronic image, listens with empathy to the numerous requests of the art of his time, helping us to better perceive the permanence of the human dimension in the global flow of communication. A perfect visual creator of the immediate future. Pierre Restany Paris 2001