AN ARTIST AND DESIGNER WITH A UNIQUE PROFILE
Defining oneself as a professional is always complex, especially within the creative professions. Nuances play an important role when it comes to interpreting the idiosyncrasy of a creator in one way or another, and it is usually the person on the other side of the text, reading it, who finally defines it based on his or her own vision of art, design and creation.
Being able to define yourself clearly and precisely is not an option, it is a necessity. In order to find your place in the creative world and collaborate in some way with other professionals, groups or organizations, one must show oneself, define oneself, catalog oneself. Therefore, this work brings great value when it comes to generating synergies, to join those who revolve around the same creative sphere and to evolve.
Having said that, categorizing oneself is always a complex and limiting task, because just as we all have different versions of ourselves as human beings, so do we as creative professionals, and focusing on or choosing one of them as a key or defining characteristic often prevents us from showing the real extension of ourselves as restless, complex, versatile, multifaceted and sometimes even contradictory creators.
I am a professional artist
This short and clear definition should be the beginning of my profile description because it encompasses the two key characteristics of my profile:
✒ I am an artist. I am not a graphic designer. I am not a decorator. I am not a creative professional. I am an ARTIST. This is the main characteristic that defines my current profile.
✒ I am a professional artist. I am not in the business of creating art that I want to exhibit in galleries or art fairs and sell it. I create commissioned artwork for clients who want to work with a real artist who has the ability to adapt to meet certain specific objectives.
Entering into the endless discussion of whether an artist who does whatever he wants and then sells it or an artist who is capable of materializing anything he is asked to do is futile, because neither of the two models of artist has more value than the other, they are simply different profiles that also require different skills. Both types of artists are genuinely creators who build, who develop from their own inventiveness works with which they bring to this world their vision of things.
The artist who creates commissioned works of art for others is generally not limited by instructions or strict definitions of what he must achieve. A more or less abstract or clear objective is proposed, depending on the case, and it is up to the artist to decide how to reach it.
Having already overcome the necessary but generic definitions of what is or is not a professional artist who creates commissioned art, I am going to explain what I really do and what is the idiosyncrasy and particular characteristics of my profile as a professional artist.
– I create art, using digital tools, that merges with interior design and architecture in physical spaces. This definition, a priori, may be difficult to understand, so I will stop to explain not only how I work but the objectives of my work:
TECHNIQUE
I develop my art using digital tools. Most (90%) of the projects in my portfolio have been created using techniques and tools from the “traditional” digital world such as collage, illustration, photo-manipulation or 3D modeling.
The projects developed since 2004 also incorporate generative artificial intelligence tools as part of the creation process, but always as a basis for the creations, replacing what were previously known in the creative world as “stock images”.
My artistic creations continue to develop through my talent in composition, as they always have. I use the power of AI to enhance the quality and impact of the base images, but the work I do is still the same as it was before this digital revolution began.
WORK PROCESS
My work process is complex, as it merges with that of the interior design team and the architecture studio. I do not create decorative art, but develop a concept with meaning. The projects I develop are not isolated works but series of pieces that, as a whole, develop a concept that conveys to the visitor the meaning behind it.
Through the message and the nuances of each work in the series, the viewer discovers, progressively, the different angles and faces of the overall concept that I want to convey.
The concept of each project is based on a series of works of art that, while always revolving around a common meaning, each of them has a unique idiosyncrasy and must harmonize with the space in which it is framed far beyond the purely technical or aesthetic dimension.
While there is no hierarchy between the three disciplines that interrelate in each project (art, interior design, architecture), there is an obvious protocol: architecture is the origin of physical spaces. Art and interior design generally develop simultaneously, feeding back into each other, enriching each other, establishing a continuous bidirectional dialogue.
My art projects create immersive environments, it is art in which the viewer can feel that they are living, ephemerally, within it, and to achieve this complete immersion my works must be complemented with the objects and elements that the interior design creates. Architecture plays the crucial role of delimiting the form and idiosyncrasy of each space.
MEANING AND STORYTELLING
The meaning conveyed by the concept of each project uses as a vehicle of communication with the viewer the resource of creating a storytelling that develops gradually throughout the different works that interact with the architectural spaces and interior design.
This storytelling is not obvious, a story is not told using basic resources, the viewer must make a cognitive and visual effort to find the nuances in each work that convey the message that adds a “chapter” to the overall storytelling of the project, which ultimately aims to express a concept.
The works that I develop in each project are not, therefore, independent and isolated scenes, but there is an interrelation between them that amplifies the sensation of being on a journey through a storytelling that takes place within a real physical context.
INSPIRATION
Every artist has sources of inspiration that go beyond his own inner world. The great artists that inspire my works to a greater extent, (listed in chronological historical order) are: Katsushika Hokusai, M. C. Escher, Salvador Dalí. Andy Warhol and Banksy.
VERSATILITY
If I were asked to speak about myself as an artist in the third person, I would qualify as my main characteristic that of being a versatile artist. The versatility, the extremely eclectic dimension of my work, is for some the reason for admiration of my work and for others an excuse to devalue me through the idea that “I am not capable of having my own style”.
I am capable of developing my own style as all artists are. Having a recognizable style, a comfort zone and never leaving it, is the direction most artists choose, and it is neither better nor worse than being an eclectic and versatile creator. They are different ways of approaching art, each with its pros and cons.
Although my work deliberately lacks an easily recognizable style, all my works have a unique personal touch “the David Zuker touch” that can be identified by those who know me and follow my work and trajectory.
I am proud to be such an eclectic and versatile artist, it is my hallmark, my personality as an artist and as a person. David Zuker is one thing and the opposite at the same time. I am the day and the night. The light and the dark. The overwhelming and the sober. The excess and the calm.
My chameleon-like attitude towards art has an indisputable advantage in the type of work I develop: since each project contains a concept, a unique and genuine storytelling, without interrelation with others I have developed in the past, my ability to give it a style totally different from the rest of my work helps to enhance the feeling that the work has a life and personality of its own.
MY PERSONALITY AS AN ARTIST: EXCESS AND ADRENALINE.
AN INCOMBUSTIBLE CREATOR
Unlike most artists, I am not able to work in peace and quiet. I create at the speed of light. When I sit in front of the blank canvas, a catharsis, an adrenaline rush runs through my mind and floods my body. This is not an exaggeration or a poetic recreation, it is a description of how I react, in a natural, organic way, to the process of artistic creation.
Few people have been able to contemplate me while I work. I am an artist who feels comfortable creating in solitude, and extremely uncomfortable when I am observed during the process of developing a work. Those who have been able to observe in real time how I work, have given me as feedback their amazement at the speed at which I move on the canvas.
I am not able to work in any other way. Making art slowly and calmly makes me anxious, as contradictory as this may seem. Creating art at the speed of light relaxes me.
I am an artist of excess. I am eccentric. I am pure nerve. I am such a non-conformist that I accept the inevitable reality that no matter what I do in my career I will never fully satisfy my needs as a creator. It’s never enough for me. You can always do more and better. You can always go further. You can always push the limits a little further.
THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN BEING AND THOSE OF THE ARTIST.
TWO OPPOSING WORLDS
One of the basic axioms of psychology is that the human being tends to be unable to perceive the limits, the glass walls in which we are enclosed and that always, from birth to death, will prevent us from breaking through them, because they are part of the world and of our own nature as human beings. Being able to understand that within these “glass walls” you can live a full life in which you enjoy an intense sense of freedom is one of the objectives that every good therapist tries to convey to their patients.
As a human being I work every day to be happy and feel free within those limits, because this is what will allow me to lead a full life, with mental health and emotional balance.
As an artist, I do the opposite, a creator does not have and should not be balanced or mentally healthy while working. It is not necessary to touch the madness of artists like Salvador Dalí, but it is appropriate to accept that, in order to go further, one must dialogue without fear or prejudice with the most neurotic and mentally unstable side of oneself. The genius of the artist is born from madness. But this must also be balanced with a purpose.
Creating art through madness, without further ado, is an unambitious goal, more associated with amateur artists. A professional artist understands that the virtue of creation lies in balancing the risk of giving free rein to his most extravagant and eccentric side with a concrete, defined, planned, reasoned purpose that has a sense and reason for being.