Recycling may seem tedious to some, but over millennia nature has perfected transforming waste into something useful. Therefore, this technique of reusing what no longer serves the purpose for which it was created, is a method that can give us many benefits.
Seeing beyond is a gift that can be developed and that Alejandro Raúl Pantin Gil possesses by nature. This sculptor and architect has managed to unite recycling with his artistic vision, seeing in the trash of others, the harmony of biological form, or the beauty in everyday color.
Pantin Gil recycles forgotten books, either due to their obsolete or disused content, and creates art with them. This Venezuelan artist, residing in Spain, is a lover of books, and has managed to see in them an inexhaustible source of inspiration, on which he relies to create sculptures inspired by natural forms.
His creative process begins with the collection of old magazines, newspapers, catalogues, yellow pages, tourist guides and/or dusty and incomplete books, which he subsequently restores, and gives them a new life, in an avant-garde artistic form, where he brings together emotions in the interior of those spaces where they are exhibited again.
This inveterate reader knows the aesthetics of books, and it is in their form where he gets inspiration to create new artistic proposals with those elements, which for others, are contamination or hindrance. Alejandro has that vision of the artist that he sees in a physical material: lines, shapes, colors, contours, which after hard work he transforms into a work of art.
The technique that Pantin Gil uses is known as book-sculpture, and is based on the collection and subsequent recycling of disused copies, to create three-dimensional sculptures. These works, which he shapes in his studio, can recreate the silhouette of a woman, animals, architectural forms, or any other structure that the same book used has inspired him.
All the sculptures of this artist are sculpted by hand using the technique of carving and topographical cuts in these obsolete books, which make lines between the letters and images of these forgotten copies, the result of which makes them once again gain a place of relevance in those spaces where they are exhibited.
Alejandro Pantin's work has been recognized internationally, as evidenced by the exhibition of the work "Mask", in the 58th edition of the Reina Sofía Prize for Painting and Sculpture, held at Casa de Vacas, in El Retiro Park, in Madrid, last March. Work that received praise from all attendees and critics at the exhibition and even from Queen Sofía herself.
If you want to know more about his work you can visit his website https://alejandrosbookart.com/
All photos courtesy of Alejandro Pantin Gil's website.