Landscape Interpretation

Miguel Arzabe

Arzabe is an interdisciplinary artist whose work takes the forms of video, painting, drawing and watercolor painting. Through his layered practice he has explored light, landscapes, geographical perspective, and most recently, alternate approaches to mapping and sightseeing. For this recent endeavor, his process also included the utilization of geographical and navigation tools and systems to create what he refers to as “spatial abstraction.”

Arzabe, We Shared a Horizon

Arzabe’s varying work not only deals with spatial elements and their physicality, but he also importantly considers the subjective body in relation to environmental contexts and conditions, be there real or virtual. In that sense, he maintains a performative aspect within his work regardless of the ultimate for that it takes.

Miguel Arzabe, /”Reject Algorithms”/, installation view, 2014

CULT Exhibitions, San Francisco

Based in San Francisco, Arzabe received his MFA from University of California at Berkeley, his MS in Environmental Fluid Dynamics from Arizona State University and his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been the recipient of many awards, residencies and fellowships including being a 2013 Montalvo Art Center, a Irvine Fellow, a 2012 Vermont Studio Center Fellow, as well as holding artist residencies during the same year at Signal Fire in Oregon, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and at Philadelphia Art Hotel. Prior to that, Arzabe was also a 2011 Don Blanche Artist in Resident in Ontario, Canada, and a 2010 Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellow. The same year he received the Harry Ford Lord Fine Arts Award and an artist grant from UC Berkeley CRG. He has had solo exhibitions at Cult Exhibitions in San Francisco and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe. He has also been included in group exhibitions at Highlight Gallery in San Francisco and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among many others.