Victor Acevedo
Victor Acevedo (born 1954 USA) is an artist and desktop computer art pioneer, best known for his digital work involving printmaking, computer graphics and video. He attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (1979-81). He lived in New York City from 1995-2009 where he taught at the School of Visual Arts, MFA Computer Art program. Acevedo is now based in Los Angeles, California.
Inspired by a range of influences from M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali to R. Buckminster Fuller and Fritjof Capra, he produced a significant body of work in traditional media painting and drawing during the years 1977-1985. Acevedo made his last oil painting in 1985 and adopted computer graphics as his primary medium.
In Long Beach, California in 1983, Acevedo created his first computer images in a workshop taught by Frank Dietrich a pioneering computer graphics practitioner and theorist. The next year he studied briefly with artist Tony Longson programming simple graphics on a VAX main frame. By 1985 he was making animations on an Apple IIE under the tutelage of Peter Sorensen at UCLA.
Acevedo’s first important computer graphic print was Ectoplasmic Kitchen produced in 1987 and exhibited for the first time in the following year. From 1985-90 he worked off and on with the PC based Cubicomp 3D modeling and animation system. The image called Tell Me the Truth (1989-90) is a key example of his 3D / Targa (TIPS) paint system works from this period. In 1994 he adopted the use of Softimage 3D and began his distinct “silver geometry period” producing such works as Skull and Suit on the Phone.
In the 1995 Victor moved to New York City and became a digital artist in residence in the BFA Computer Art Department at the School of Visual Arts. He began teaching there in ’97 and moved to the Masters level (MFA) program three years later. In 1996 he created one of his most well know images called The Lacemaker, which he named after the same-titled painting by Johannes Vermeer (1665).
In 1998 an event that proved a validation of his early (1979-85) traditional media artwork and concepts, Acevedo was one of only 12 artists invited to exhibit work along side Escher’s at the international M.C. Escher Centennial Congress in Rome. Examples of both his traditional and digital art works were presented there. He exhibited the graphite drawing, Four-fold Rotational Wasp and his digital print called Ectoplasmic Kitchen.
In 1999 Acevedo's digital image The Lacemaker was featured in the ACM/SIGGRAPH produced film documentary called The Story of Computer Graphics and later (2007) his work was cited in ACM/SIGGRAPH’s art history archive initiative.
In 2002 Acevedo’s essay, “Space Time with M.C. Escher and R. Buckminster” was published in the book "Escher's Legacy: A Centennial Celebration," edited by Doris Schattschneider and Michelle Emmer (Springer Verlag 2002). In 2003 he published an essay entitled “Why Digital Prints matter” in that ACM/SIGGRAPH conference Art show catalogue and visual proceedings.
In 2005 one of Acevedo's early computer art prints (1990) was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, as part of their acquisition of the Patric Prince Computer Art Collection. Which scholars agree is one of the most important collections of Computer fine art in the world today.
In November of this same year, Acevedo was invited to exhibit some of his prints and give a lecture about the development of his work at an international symposium called SYNERGETICS IN THE ARTS at the Isamu Noguchi Museum, in Long Island City, NY. The 2-day event was co-produced by the Synergetic Collaborative (SNEC). Acevedo’s talk, Art of the Void Matrix, addressed the ongoing conceptual connection between his work and that of R. Buckminster Fuller's Synergetic geometry.
In 2006 through 2009, Acevedo's work was featured in several art history books. The first of which was called Art of the Digital Age, edited by Bruce Wands (Thames and Hudson 2006) The piece reproduced in the book is called Eric in Orense (2000) and it was also featured in the the book’s online and hardcopy promotional announcements. The book is described as "The first major illustrated survey of this exciting, new, and experimental field".
Acevedo’s work was discussed at length in a recent important and influential book called From Technological to Virtual Art, written by art historian Frank Popper, (MIT Press 2007) and then his image called Springside Cynthesis appeared in Wolf Lieser’s Digital Art (Ullmann/Tandem 2009)
Following the natural evolution of his work, in 2008-09 Acevedo has shifted his primary attention to producing visual music works. Exploring the implications of Synesthesia as well as the use of computer animated geometry based on Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics, his new work investigates the intersection of dance, electronica and dynamic geometrical structure. Acevedo’s ongoing collaboration and dialogue with design scientist Thomas Miller and architect Fabiano Cavichioli has been an enormous influence on his current practice, especially in the application of Miller’s ground breaking work known as Synergetics 3.0.
Acevedo has shown his work in over 80 exhibitions worldwide including the Siggraph/TAS, Paris, 2005; Novosibirsk State Art Museum; 2005; Digital Art Museum, Berlin 2004; Millennium Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2004; ACM/Siggraph CG03; Siggraph/TAS, Cleveland Art Museum 2003; Digital Duality, EZTV/Cyberspace 2002; Levall Gallery, Novosibirsk, Russia, 2002; YLEM's 20th Anniversary Exhibition, SF, California, 2001; Colville Place Gallery, London, 2001; in ArcadeIII, touring the UK 2001- 02, Galerie der Gegenwart, Weisbaden, Germany, 2001; ACM/SIGGRAPH 98, Orlando, Florida; M.C. Escher Centennial Congress, Rome, Italy 1998; NY Digital Salon 1996 & 1994; Golden Plotter, Gladbeck, DE 1994; ISEA, Minneapolis, MN 1993; Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria 1991.