Eltono (1975) is an artist who transforms public space, using the city as his support, studio, and inspiration. Born in Paris in 1975 and having lived in Madrid, Beijing, and now back in France, Eltono has been experimenting with color, line and form throughout his 20 year plus career, integrating his paintings with his architectural surroundings in buildings and cities around the world. His recent paintings at the IDEO office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, as well as his work for the Facebook Paris, Artist in Residency program, showcase his unique ability to integrate and highlight already existing (but often hidden) elements of each space he works on. Alongside his work in the public sphere, in which he has painted on the streets of more than 100 cities, Eltono has also shown his works in many world-renowned galleries and museums, including the Tate Modern, Somerset House, Fundacion Miro, the Artium Museum and many more. He increasingly finds himself drawn towards working with architects, curators and developers who incorporate artists within their creative approach: Collaborating with architects and designers from the ground up, as he did with the iconic IDEO building in Massachusetts, this integrative art and architectonic approach has now become a key part of his wide-ranging practice.

Signed and numbered by the artist.

During June 2023, Varsi Art & Lab hosted French artist Eltono.

During the two-week residency, the artist, with the support of 56 Fili, had the opportunity to investigate the use of screen printing technique, breaking its patterns and using it as an extension of his artistic and aesthetic research.

For his “Modo” project, begun in 2010 and still evolving today, Eltono immerses himself in the possibilities of random chance and does so by challenging the unknown of the final result. For each work, the preliminary identification of a mathematics-based protocol embodied in a preparatory grid, means that the rest of the process is guided solely by contingencies.

Indeed, it is the unpredictable roll of a die that determines the shape, rotation and color that will be used in each grid square.

The methodology applied to this project was thus applied to the productions of this residency which, in a game that moves in balance between rules and chance, form a new body of screen printed works that break the norm of the series in favor of uniqueness.

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