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Vargas-Suarez Universal in his Bishkek studio. Photographed by Louise Amelie Studio, Berlin.
I source scientific visualization to explore and create artworks directly informed by geometries and architectures from the spaceflight programs operated by the U.S., Russia, Japan and the E.U. The visual data mined results in site-specific murals, works on paper, oil paintings, sound art pieces and multi-media installations. Images and information from Mars remote sensing, aerospace architecture, earth observation, and materials sciences are amongst many of the constantly flowing and evolving real-time sources used in the studio and post-studio processes.
- Vargas-Suarez Universal
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Space Station: Ludgate, Oil pastel on electro-static transfer mylar print, 2005
Early works
The first time Vargas-Suarez Universal visited New York City, he left the UT-Austin campus to travel almost two thousand miles on a Greyhound bus. Carrying a backpack and a little bit of money, his first stop was the Museum of Modern Art. Information Art: Diagramming Microchips was “the first exhibition to examine the computer chip as an icon of our technological civilization.”[1] Inundated with photographs of microchips from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Vargas-Suarez was inspired to begin mapping time and technology with his own geometric language.
Vargas-Suarez laid the groundwork for his geometric language by studying library design and architecture. He pored over blueprints and architectural journals to better understand how library systems presented and shared information. His research led to Additions (later renamed Space Station) a series of intricate India ink drawings of airports, libraries and museums at home and abroad. The artist then moved beyond spaces of civic engagement to explore public transport hubs. From Siena to San Diego, Kuala Lumpur to Shanghai, and Madrid to Berlin, Vargas-Suarez conducted on-site research while traveling by photographing international airports and railway stations. These photographs allowed the artist to take these public spaces back to his private studio and translate them into two-dimensional geometric vector forms. Each drawing serves as a single unit in the artist’s larger visual network of world and space travel.
[1] “Information Art: Diagramming Microchips,” press release, The Museum of Modern Art, August 1990.
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ARTERIAL SYSTEMS
2004Inspired by his Mini-Med School coursework at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Vargas-Suarez Universal reimagined the New York City subway system as if it were a human circulatory system. He recalled the metaphor in a 2005 interview with BOMB Magazine: “with Manhattan being an island, I thought about the island as a body and the subway system as this arterial lifeline that carries the energy particles that make it function.” This vision led him to produce the Arterial Systems series, for which he collected subway service change notices (which inform riders when trains will be canceled, rerouted, or under construction) and obscured the printed text with dizzying vector drawings.
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Dieu Donné Paper Mill, Inc. Workspace Program
As one of four residents in the 2007-08 Dieu Donné's Workspace Program, Vargas-Suarez Universal continued to develop his artistic technique and explore new materials while experimenting in a collaborative setting. While learning the hand papermaking process, he realized that he had “always thought of paper as a sort of landscape.”[1] Following his fascination with diagrams and discovery, Vargas-Suarez used a syringe to inject blue pigment into a topographical map of Pennsylvania and called the final work Terraformation Triptych.
[1] Vargas-Suarez Universal, “Vargas-Suarez Universal,” Dieu Donné, November 2008, https://www.dieudonne.org/vargassuarez-universal
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Back at his own studio, Vargas-Suarez had started working with what he understood as “non-art materials”,[1] such as discarded satellite dishes, thermal space blankets, and video projector screens. He felt determined to incorporate one of these materials into his work at Dieu Donné, and despite some difficulty, with the help of technical collaborator Steve Orlando, Vargas-Suarez successfully “sandwiched the thermal blankets between layered sheets of cotton and abaca paper by way of cutout ‘windows.’” This major breakthrough, now one of many, marked only the beginning for Vargas-Suarez, whose work continued to grow in complexity and depth.
[1] Vargas-Suarez Universal, “Vargas-Suarez Universal,” Dieu Donné, November 2008, https://www.dieudonne.org/vargassuarez-universal
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Selected texts and publications
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Space and Art: Connecting Two Creative Endeavors
Center for Space Policy and Strategy, The Aerospace Corporation February 2021Text by William A. Bezouska
Read the full text here -
Vista
Contemporary Works by Latin American Artists, University of Maryland University College 2012Read the full text hereText by Jodie Dinapoli and Eva Mendoza Chandas
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Disonare
No.3 September 2014Text by Carla Stellweg
Read the full text here -
Walls & Getaways
Existentie vzw, ACEC, Ghent, Belgium June 2008Text by Matthias Van der Vel
Read the full text here -
BALTIC: The Art Factory
2003Text by Julieta Gonzalez
Read the full text here -
Consensus of Taste: Mexic-Arte Museum's 15th Annual Young Latino Artists Exhibition
Mexic-Arte Museum 2011Text by Claudio Zapata
Read The Full Text Here -
Claiming Space: Mexican Americans in U.S. Cities
Stanlee & Gerald Rubin Center For The Visual Arts, University of Texas at El Paso 2008Texts by Kate Bonansinga, Víctor Manuel Espinosa and Mónica Ramírez-Montagut
Read The Full Text Here
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Transition to Painting
Virus AmericanusA long-time admirer of the Hudson River School, Vargas-Suarez Universal relied on imagery from cameras, satellites, and telescopes to paint abstract celestial landscapes. His earliest paintings focused on the geography and geological history of Mars. Across almost twenty years of painting, Vargas-Suarez has consistently found new ways of working with and visualizing journeys through space.
At the start of the new millennium and in the wake of the dotcom bubble, Vargas-Suarez began his Virus Americanus series reflecting on the nature of networks, computer viruses, and freedom of movement. The series title, Latin for ‘American virus,’ imitates the formal binomial nomenclature system for naming and classifying organisms. Vargas-Suarez completed part of the series on wood panels to highlight the many ways that humans themselves can act as viruses in both society and nature. Taking on new meaning after the September 11 attacks and COVID-19 pandemic, the Virus Americanus series is both timeless and ever-evolving:
[I] started the series right before 9/11, Summer of 2000, continued into 03-04. Virus americanus are the latin words for "virus" and "American." [I was thinking about] Networks, architecture, how we move through the world. “What it means to be from the United States, what it means to be a foreigner from the U.S.
'Foreign body in a body' (virus) scientific nomenclature.
Then 9/11 happened and emphasized what it means to be foreign, [to be] a threat. When painting on wood panels… 'Organic natural material from landscape that withstands time…' Trees as nature’s architecture. Started noticing wood grain as 'organic biomorphic forms within wood grain'
Vargas-Suarez Universal
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El Dorado
2009Эльдорадо, Russian for ‘El Dorado’ or ‘The Gilded One,’ refers to both the legendary king who covered himself in gold and the lost city over which he reigned. For centuries, the story of El Dorado drew Spanish conquistadors and European explorers to the Americas to search far and wide for this mythical city of gold. Vargas-Suarez’s Эльдорадо series represents yet another material breakthrough for the artist. For these paintings, Vargas-Suarez covered large panels with space blankets which were originally invented by NASA to protect and insulate their spacecrafts. Vargas-Suarez then painted over these amber-gold blankets with his vector shapes and space shuttle imagery. When exhibiting this series, Vargas-Suarez would add site-specific, antenna-like wall drawings so that the paintings resembled satellites and spacecrafts floating in the cosmos.
[The series] refers to the mythological land of infinite wealth– a legend extremely popular in the seventeenth century.
The installation combined painting and wall drawing that echos satellites and space crafts; with lines extending onto walls, continue lines from paintings.
Vargas-Suarez Universal
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Spacewalks-EVAs
Vargas-Suarez Universal has spent many nights studying how people live and work in space. Sometimes working until two, three, and four in the morning, Vargas-Suarez regularly projected livestream broadcasts of astronauts working outside the International Space Station onto a wall in his studio. Using enamel paint markers, Vargas-Suarez would trace the outline of structures and spacesuits as they moved through space. He then used these contours to create his Expedition and Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) paintings. Extravehicular activity is the official term to describe activities performed by space-suited astronauts outside of their spacecrafts.[1] Vargas-Suarez completed these spacewalk paintings in aluminum oil enamel on polypropylene canvas, materials that are typically used in spacecraft assembly and manufacturing. By capturing the real-time movement of astronauts in space, Vargas-Suarez translates scientific information to an aesthetic context.
[1] “Extravehicular Activities,” NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/content/extravehicular-activities
NASA Astronaut, Chris Cassidy (USA) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Luca Parmitano (ITA) worked outside the International Space Station moving at 17,500 mph at an altitude of 220 statute miles for 6 hours and 7 minutes to do maintenance work on the orbiting station. The linear drawings are live tracings of choreographed movements and on screen graphics during the televised spacewalk. The paint is aluminum oil enamel, also used to paint spacecraft, and painted on polypropylene canvas, used to cover electrical cables onboard spacecrafts, satellites and rocket hardware.
Vargas-Suarez Universal
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Production images, SPACEWALKS
2007 - present -
Space Junk Diamonds
2012-2018While maintaining explicit reference to space age technology, Vargas-Suarez spent the early 2010s cultivating his signature vector style and worked in as many colors, orientations, and combinations imaginable. Entry Points refers to the act of entering and exiting atmospheres. Spacecraft navigators must locate and approach precise atmospheric ‘entry points’ to safely land on Mars or return to Earth. This work, along with the Thermal Vectors paintings, feature solar cells. Solar cells convert sunlight to electricity and are the building blocks of solar panels. Another group of paintings, Jettison Re-Entry, is named after the debris, or ‘space junk,’ that falls from spacecrafts and gets left behind in Earth’s orbit. Meanwhile, Telemetry refers to the process of gathering and transmitting data from spacecrafts and satellites back to mission controls on the ground, relay antennas and the International Space Station. Many of these pure vector paintings are considered part of the umbrella Space Junk Diamonds series.
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Vargas Suarez Universal, Thermal Vectors, Oil enamel on polypropylene canvas, 24 x24 in
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Telemetry, Oil enamel on canvas, 30 x 30 in, 2012
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Entry Points, Solar cells on polypropylene canvas, 30 x 30 in
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Telementry Re-Entry, Oil enamel on canvas, 30x 30 in, 2012
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Vargas-Suarez Univeral, Jettison Re-Entry VII, Oil enamel on canvas, 30 x 30 in, 2012
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Jettison Re-Entry VI, Oil Enamel on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2012
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Thermal Vectors V, Oil Enamel and solar cells on polypropylene canvas, 24x24 in, 2013
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Jettison Re-Entry, Oil Enamel on canvas, 24 x24 in, 2012
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Vargas-Suarez Universal (artist's profile) from Barbora Bereznakova on Vimeo.
Vargas-Suarez Universal: Artist Profile
Barbora Bereznakova Watch on Vimeo -
Paintings 2004-Present
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Space Station Terra, 2004
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Space Station Docking Point, 2008
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, 5 Sputniks, 2013
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Vargas-Suarez Universal, Vector Array, 2013
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MURALS, INSTALLATIONS, AND PUBLIC ART
In 2013, Columbia University’s Ira D. Wallach Gallery and Miller Theatre invited Vargas-Suarez Universal to be the first artist to transform the Miller Theatre lobby with a site-specific installation. The inaugural commission was the first-ever collaboration between the two campus arts institutions and led to the now-annual exhibition series in the Miller Theatre lobby. Working in residence for five days before the opening, Vargas-Suarez recalibrated his vector system to resemble musical notation. The Gallery and Theatre directors hoped to inspire dialogue about the relationship between visual, musical, and performing arts.
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The Yard
In 2015, 2016, and 2017, Vargas-Suarez Universal completed a series of large-scale murals for The Yard’s New York City offices and coworking spaces in Herald Square, Williamsburg, and Lincoln Square. These installations were commissioned as part of The Yard’s Art Program, which seeks to support local artists and inspire creativity, productivity, and collaboration in their coworking spaces.
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P.S./I.S. 191 The Riverside School for Makers and Artists
In 2017, Vargas-Suarez Universal completed an elaborate two-part installation for the opening of P.S./I.S. 191 The Riverside School for Makers and Artists building in Manhattan. His ceiling paintings illuminate the school’s entryway and his Panorama ceramic mosaic mural creates a warm, playful atmosphere for students and staff. The entire project was commissioned by the New York City Department of Education and the New York City School Construction Authority as part of their Public Art for Public Schools Program and in collaboration with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art Program.
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Panorama, 2017, Porcelain mosaic tile, 9.5 x 146 feet (on 2 floors). PS/IS 191 Riverside School for Makers and Artists, New York, NY
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Panorama, 2017, Porcelain mosaic tile, 9.5 x 146 feet (on 2 floors). PS/IS 191 Riverside School for Makers and Artists, New York, NY
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Celestial Mechanics, 2017, Oil and enamel on canvas in eight parts. PS/IS 191 Riverside School for Makers and Artists, New York, NY
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Celestial Mechanics, 2017, Oil and enamel on canvas in eight parts. PS/IS 191 Riverside School for Makers and Artists, New York, NY
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Works on Paper
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Assembly Complex, 2015-16, Installation. American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Brooklyn to Bishkek: Exploring Textiles
In 2015, Vargas-Suarez was one of a few international artists and artisans invited to participate in the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) Public Art Program. Through collaborative workshops and discussions, these artists produced new work for temporary and permanent installations at the new AUCA campus in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Thinking about land, culture and connectivity, Vargas-Suarez created a mountainous vector mural for the university’s central atrium. The following year, after months of collaboration with Kyrgyz fashion designer Dilbar Ashimbaeva, Vargas-Suarez installed a silk topographical map entitled Assembly Complex. The silk map features Dilbar’s delicate embroidery, Vargas-Suarez’s hand painted vectors, and a digital collage from both artist’s drawings.
As we finished this project and since I have been back to work in my studio here in Brooklyn, I've felt strongly that ‘Assembly Complex’ represents, and perhaps, resembles a map of the complexities that surround us through language, technology, information, geography, culture and time. We used the most natural and organic materials as well as the most current technologies to arrive at this artwork. More than with any other project in my oeuvre, I've learned that my work is perhaps a highly personalized way of mapping reality that takes one on an orbit to and from the known and the unknown. I've also learned that the unknown is my comfort zone. ‘Assembly Complex’ planted many seeds in me to return to Kyrgyzstan and to start other projects.[1] –
Vargas-Suarez Universal, 2016
[1] Vargas-Suarez Universal, “Stitching the Time: Assembly Complex,” Artysan – Aida Sulova, October 12, 2016, https://asulova.wixsite.com/artystan/single-post/2016/10/12/stitching-the-time-assembly-complex
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Assembly Complex,
In collaboration with Dilbar Ashimbaeva, American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 2015-16 -
34 Blue Vectors, 2017, Tian-Shan mountains sheep wool & chi reed technique, 45.5 x 26.5 in (116 x 67 cm)
Living and working in Bishkek allowed Vargas-Suarez to connect with and learn the art of felt making from local craftspeople. The ceremonious act of creating felt carpets is central to traditional Kyrgyz identity and culture. With the help of women artisans in Bishkek and the Lake Issyk Kul region, Vargas-Suarez created many artworks using the two ancient felt carpet techniques, ala-kiyiz and shyrdak. Both techniques require many hands and steps to prepare, dye, cut, and stitch the loose wool into a durable felt works. Vargas-Suarez’s felt pieces may vary in size, ranging from smaller handheld squares to full-size carpets, but their tremendous value cannot be understated. With these works, Vargas-Suarez honors thousands of years of Kyrgyz cultural heritage and celebrates those who continue to carry these ancestral technologies into our time.
I decided to go backwards rather than forwards to deepen my understanding, first to adding machines and punch cards, and then later to carpets and textiles, silk and wool. These materials are the great ancestors of what we use today as computers, LCD screens and mobile devices. [1]
Vargas-Suarez Universal, 2019
[1] Beni Etz, “Creative Biskek: Rafael Vargas-Suarez,” Central Asia Forum, April 15, 2019, https://centralasiaforum.org/2019/04/15/creative-bishkek-rafael-vargas-suarez/
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Next Green Sphere, 2018-19, Hand sewn, felted and hand dyed Tian-Shan mountains sheep wool in ala-kiyiz and saima, techniques tapestry, 84 x 134 in
Rafael Vargas-Suarez, aka VSU (Vargas-Suarez UNIVERSAL) is always on the move. Following him on his travels and explorations over the past 20 years it follows that his approach is reminiscent of certain European traveling artists, beginning with the arrival of the Dutch painter Frans Post to Brazil in 1637, and continuing with the visits of numerous other traveling artists not only from Europe but also from the United States over the course of the 19th century, when national schools of painting began to emerge throughout Latin America. VSU difers, however, in that he is a 21st Century Latin American traveling artist that was born in Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas, very close to NASA. Living adjacent to NASA and having studied Astronomy and Art History, it is not surprising to observe his focus on our planet Earth in relationship to the Universe, and the ongoing space exploration that continues to animate his eponymous work and his signature style based on vectors that carry the information about magnitude and direction of physical quantity.
In his current series and exhibition of tapestries that can alternately function as rugs, VSU’s visual sources derive from the ancient shorelines of planet Mars, from some 3 billion years ago. The two Rovers that cruised Mars (Spirit and Opportunity) launched in June and July of 2003 to search for answers about the history of water on Mars. The results have yielded information of past oceans that may have covered most of Mars’ northern hemisphere and introduced the Next Green Sphere as Mars’ new nickname, implying that after humans terraform the Red Planet into a Green Planet, Mars will have an oxygen-rich atmosphere with oceans and plants.
One of the main tapestries is befittingly titled, Next Green Sphere (2018-19), measuring in 84 x 134 inches and made with hand-sewn, dyed Tian-Shan Mountains sheep wool. This piece was inspired by VSU’s 2013 trip to Lake Baikal, Siberia, which is the oldest and deepest on earth containing almost twenty-five percent of the entire world’s unfrozen fresh water. Then, as of 2014 until 2018, VSU traveled several times to Lake Issyk-Kul (Warm Lake), which is 2,004 square miles in area and never freezes due to a slightly salty condition. One of VSU’s concerns has always been water, without which no human life exists, and as is well known, makes up approximately sixty-five percent of our bodies. The color blue throughout our cultural and visual history is also central in VSU’s work, with a couple of the most ancient being Indigo and Cobalt. In addition, the color red and its history leads to connections with Mars, oxidation, blood, life and death in addition to other binary relationships with which to seek out new variations on the Yin and Yang themes that connect the opposites in his compositions.
Carla Stellweg, Celestial Vectors Earth Meets Sky, February 21, 2019
Read the full text here -
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Celestial Vectors, 2018-20, Laser cut, hand felted, hand dyed, hand sewn Tien-Shan Mountain sheep’s wool with Shyrdak and Saima techniques
24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm) and 27 x 27 inches (68.5 x 68.5cm) each
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Celestial Vectors, 2018-20, Laser cut, hand felted, hand dyed, hand sewn Tien-Shan Mountain sheep’s wool with Shyrdak and Saima techniques
24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm) and 27 x 27 in (68.5 x 68.5cm) each
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Ala-Kiyiz Vectors, 2018, Pigmented wool, ala-kiyiz technique, 29 x 28 in (73 x 70 cm)
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Ala-Kiyiz Vectors II, 2018, Pigmented wool, ala-kiyiz technique, 29 x 28 in(73 x 70 cm)
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45 Red Vectors, 2018-2019
Hand sewn, felted and hand dyed Tian-Shan mountain sheep's wool in ala-kiyiz and shyrdak techniques, 84 x 134 in (2.13 x 3.40 M) Edition of 3 + 1 AP. Handmade in Kyrgyzstan -
Vargas-Suarez Universal
Artist MonographView the Artist Monograph of Vargas-Suarez Universal Here
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Artist Books
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“Algorithms of Chaos”
202122 color images in hardcover book
View Artist Book Here
30x20 cm. (11.75 x 7 7/8 inches)
Limited edition of 10 hand signed, and numbered copies -
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS
2022Limited edition artist’s picture book of 22 images of image processing through painting and digital manipulations
View Artist Book Here
Edition of 10 hand numbered and signed copies
7 7/8 x 5 3/4 inches (20x15 cm)
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Vargas-Suarez Universal in his Brooklyn, New York studio, 2016. Photographed by Kevin W. Condon
About Vargas-Suarez Universal
Vargas-Suarez Universal is an artist currently living and working between New York City; Houston, Texas and Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan). He was born in Mexico City and raised in the Houston, Texas suburb of Clear Lake City, adjacent to the Johnson Space Center (NASA). From 1991 to 1996 he studied astronomy and art history at the University of Texas at Austin and moved to New York City in 1997. He is primarily known for large-scale murals, paintings, drawings, and sound recordings. He sources American, Russian, European, Canadian and Japanese spaceflight programs, astronomy, and aerospace architecture to create commissioned, studio-based and public artworks for museums, galleries, private and public spaces. Vargas-Suarez has conducted post-studio research at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA; Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL; Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX; Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Korolyov (Moscow), Russia; and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. His writings have been published by Right Brain Words, New York; Edizioni Charta, Milano and The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Vargas-Suarez Universal: Vector-Titlán
Past viewing_room