Pablo Gimenez-Zapiola’s Eastext takes place on three Thursdays in and around each venue: Oct. 13 at El Rincón Social, Oct. 20 at GalleryHOMELAND and Oct. 27 at Box 13.
Photos courtesy of the artist.
Fourteen years later, the architect turned artist has made a name for himself in Houston as the producer of poignant yet fleeting images. He deals in photography and video projections, responding to built spaces rather than constructing them. Now working on his second grant funded by the city of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Gimenez-Zapiola has focused his latest project on the city’s east end. “It’s a growing area.” he states.
Gimenez-Zapiola will be projecting poetry from a (slowly) moving vehicle onto the neighborhood in a project he is calling Eastext, which takes place on three Thursdays in and around each venue: Oct. 13 at El Rincon Social, Oct. 20 at GalleryHOMELAND and Oct. 27 at Box 13.
His first projections were often just that, a single word projected onto a building’s surface. “Words as shapes always interested me. You can decide to read it or not.” Over time, he decided to project onto moving trains, which caused the text to undulate and flicker. Gimenez-Zapiola compares it to graffiti, but only for context. “It’s a way of gently or softly touching things without leaving any trace.”
The poetry for Gimenez-Zapiola’s performance is a gumbo of languages, styles, and poetic themes, but all of the writers are Houston-based. Gwendolyn Zepeda, Houston’s first poet laureate, is a contributor, along with John Pluecker, Eloísa Pérez-Lozano, Vanessa Torres and Holly Walrath.
Gimenez-Zapiola ‘s studio is one of the most compact and organized I’ve seen. It is intensely neat but pleasant, lined with books and magazines, photo equipment and small mementos. Three computer screens beam invitingly from the center desk. Unlike many artists, Gimenez-Zapiola doesn’t require massive amounts of square footage. One is left with the sense that the bigger world is his studio, and his small space is just a nook in which to process the vast poetry he encounters out there.
“Most of my projects I just find,” he says, showing me a recent series entitled Night’ Trees. These trees are captured photographically in the uniform but limited circle of a flashlight beam. They almost appear surprised, their foliage silver in the sudden light.
—CASEY GREGORY