@marcosguinoza

Instagram: @marcosguinoza  

1. What's your story? Where are you from?

Look. If I were to tell you my story, the whole thing, I’d probably bore you to death. My life, like most lives out there, is basically a slow succession of unimportant events. I like to say that life is too long without feeling anything. I am a Brazilian descendant of Japanese. I live in Santos (a seaside town about an hour away from São Paulo) with my dachshund, Naomi, and with my husband, Jorge. Wait! Was I supposed to reveal all of that?

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

My art is a combination of digital collage and graphic design. It’s mostly minimalist because the emptiness of that aesthetic fulfills me. But I also play with geometry and lots of colors.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

Photography. I like photography because that medium offers me a good basis for my pieces. Before I start a collage I always look for pictures. I appropriate these images by removing them from its original context and placing them in a completely different context.

4. What is your artistic process like?

Usually I burn the midnight oil. I work better at night but deep silence is something that bothers me so there’s always some music playing in the background. Sometimes I have an idea and I look for images in order to help me elaborate it. But I also surf the web for hours without an agenda. And then out of the blue an image may pop up in my screen and seduce me. In those cases I start to work with that image until I find a way to insert it in my own universe.

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

Poetry, movies, music, but mainly the human being and its endless contradictions.

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

There’s this Brazilian poet, Ferreira Gullar, who said that “we create art because life itself is not enough”. He is right in so many levels. Art amplifies life, increase its volume, its forms, its colors and intensity.

7. Where did you study?

I am a journalist by profession, a self taught graphic designer and an “artist’’ in my free time.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Alive perhaps? I don’t look ahead to try and see the future. I try to follow the AA motto, I live one day at a time. But let me get that clear, I am not an alcoholic, ok? I am a chocoholic, though.

9. What about in ten?

Dead perhaps? Ten years. That’s way too much! I don’t want to think about it, I’d rather let life do its own job.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

Honestly I don’t expect much. I try to stay away from the hell of expectations. I try to be realistic. I do like to dream, we all do, but I like to dream in a scenario of realism. I am not very talkative these days so I do art because I feel the need to express myself somehow. In the past I’d channel that into short stories but now I’ve replaced words with images.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

Junk food and I am not ashamed of it.

12. Favourite book?

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoievsky. That’s definitely my favorite book.

13. Favourite genre of music?

It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but I like it.

14. What are your hobbies?

I don’t know if one can call it a hobby, but walking with my dog, Naomi, by my neighborhood is definitely the highlight of my day. It calms me down.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

Actually I only started my collages over a year ago. For that reason I don’t see myself as an artist yet. I’d say that I am an artist in progress, trying different shapes, colors, textures. You know, looking for my artistic identity.