Antonio Mora - an interview

Antonio Mora responds here to some questions concerning his work as a digital artist... He is the author of a body of work that is stunning, beautiful, stimulating, and that is nothing if not the appropriation of the dreamlike. Do these images come from his imagination? From ours?

JG: Several interviews with you are available online...

AM: Yes, I'm often asked where my inspiration comes from. And I often reply with the same answer, which bores me and could be fairly prosaic. Before even beginning to speak of the poetry or of the magic that my images transmit, we must speak of their starting point, of their origin. The origin of my work is a mix between intuition and the appropriation of the images of other people.

JG: Before your images, we feel certain things, we also, evidently, start to think. Is your approach solely intuitive, perhaps solely graphic?

AM: My work gives me the impression of being a sort of medium between two realities. This has a lot to do with dreams, a sort of introspection permitting me to shine a light on the archetypes that we all have in our spirits. More than creating, I re-create. In the same manner that, when one reads a novel, one creates, one somehow dreams, a certain image of characters... I think that my images remind us of things.

JG: Your pieces speak of culture, of nature, of man and woman, of conscious and unconscious. Why always use faces?

AM: These "fantasies" need a face to be visible. That motivates me. I love exploring the psyche, when the eyes in a face disappear and are filled with something else, a landscape, some clouds, the sea...

JG: It's a way to speak about man...

AM: What interests me overall is beauty. I've been an artistic director for a long time and I'm a compulsive "consumer" of images.

JG: There is a phrase from Jean-Luc Godard: "A landscape is like a face." What do you think?

AM: That phrase fits me perfectly. My work consists of associating faces and landscapes, to create a vision of reality that procures a powerful emotion in whoever sees it. Faces and landscapes express depth and feeling, beauty, serenity.

JG: Certain people consider the analogy to be the heart of human thought (to relate things, circumstances, lyrics...). It makes me think of a book that I'm reading: “The Analogy, Heart of the Thought”, by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander. Do these considerations come to mind when you create your images?

AM: I suppose so, yes. I say “I suppose” because when I create images, my reason ceases to function. I am transported by other powers that one cannot define with words. Poetry, art, to feel yourself taken by an inexplicable emotion that escapes reason.

JG: How do you find your images?

AM: For some time now, I've had a personal bank of images. I also use images that I find on Pinterest or other blogs that I'm on. My art is fed by the images that I transform, that I fuse. I'm a sort of composer of images. I need others to be able to work. In this moment, I'm working on the face of a Russian, a client, very beautiful, who has asked me to create a piece, using her portrait. In this case, it's an image that someone has given me.

JG: Why two images, and not three, four, or more?

AM: I don't need more. Sometimes I use a third in the background, for example. When I discovered other artists using this technique, it was like a revelation. The pieces of Aneta Ivanova or Matt Wisniewski... It's thanks to these artists that I'm doing what I'm doing today. I was able to develop a manner to express myself that is personal to me. People often tell me that my pieces are very recognizable.

JG: Apart from the artists that you've mentioned who have directly inspired you, are you interested in any other artistic movements or other artists?

AM: I love all of art history. The surrealists (if I were to write, I think that I would write in a surrealistic manner), I also really love the Italian Renaissance. In this moment I'm working on images linked to the Renaissance. The rendition of my images sometimes seems revived, the colors, a certain aura... I'm lucky that my work is so well received by the public and I think that I even have started a certain trend. The other day, for example, we were having a joint exposition, and I went out into the street and I saw some posters for a club using the same technique as me, the same frame, the same themes. One would have thought that I had made them myself. I think that I've somehow opened a door, permitting others to express themselves and to finally find their own way to communicate.

JG: Where do you exhibit?

AM: Almost all of my activity is done online. I've only been creating these photo montages for two years, but the success has been phenomenal. Now I work in the entire world, Turkey, Israel, the United States, Australia... last year I was invited to the Photo Biennale, in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. That was truly incredible, especially for a country as exotic as Uzbekistan. One would barely have recognized me in the street.

JG: Would you like to expand your work to video?

AM: I still have a lot to explore with the still image. But if someday, someone proposed to collaborate on a video project, I would ask myself the question...

JG: Thank you for this interview and for such inspiring images!