VOYAGE 50505

I am turning L.  August 2023 will be an exciting Birthday. For this I am preparing an art exhibition (ink+watercolors) encapsulating where I have lived or meaningful places where I spent time over the last 50 years of my existence. For this I selected 50 locations across 5 continents and thus the title Voyage 50505.

I am a Mexican architect and an academic. I was born in the former capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan, today Mexico City some 50 years ago. By the age of 6 my parents decided to move out of the big metropolis into a house my father designed and built in his hometown, San Luis Potosi, a colonial mid-size city in the center of Mexico. My mother found the town too small and lacked the cosmopolitan life that Mexico city offered. By 1982 they were done with the provincial life and decided to return to the big smog, this time in Guadalajara, in the west of Mexico. "La perla de occidente" is a beautiful city founded on the 14 of February or 1542. I consider myself from Guadalajara (aka as Tapatio) because I spent my formative years there. 

My father built three houses in Guadalajara, and thus moved three times, until we were happy...at least until I left home in January of 1996, never to return to live in Mexico since. Since 1996, I have lived in countries such as Spain, Denmark, Portugal, England and since 2004, Australia. Although I am close to completing two decades in Australia, I have spent extensive periods of time overseas in countries such as The Netherlands (2010-11), Switzerland (2012-13), Italy (2012-), Singapore (2007-) and Hong Kong (2013-).  In Italy I have been a Visiting Professor of Architecture (UNESCO Chair in Mantova) and such a venture has been a highlight in my personal and professional life.. OK, other than becoming a father at the end of  2018. I currently live in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia across from a botanical garden (parks and gardens have always been a constant in my life) and a few blocks away from St Kilda beach.

It has taken me 50 years to prepare for this forthcoming August exhibition. For it, I have created a series of 50 watercolours (mainly in A3 landscape format, framed in white, 400mmx500mm) with the theme "VOYAGE 50505", after the amazing journeys of Jules Verne also known as Voyage Extraordinaires. 50 years, 50 places, 5 continents, in which I paint architectural landmarks, cityscapes, landscape spanning from 1973 to 2023. The first painting of the series is Tenochtitlan, the ancient city of the Aztecs, now Mexico City and the place where I was born. Other examples include: 1991 a painting with the theme of visit to Grand Canyon during a road-trip I did with my father to Arizona,  Luna y Sol is the title of my interpretation of Luna Park, 'luna' meaning moon in Spanish and adding the term Sol (sun) as there is an interplay of sun and shadow. For my fourth sample I selected a canvas that is more abstract depicting various sites across New York when I visited in 1998, 1999/2000. Note that the WTC twin towers were still standing. The fifth and final image shows various views of Barcelona, from the clean lines of Mies van der Rohe to the intricate and whimsical architecture of Antonio Gaudi.

"VOYAGE 50505" 50 years, 50 places, 5 continents

1. Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City (1973)

2. Cancun, a new city in the Caribean (1974)

3. Mexico, a kids puzzle (1975)

4. Teotihuacan, the lost city (1976)

5. Proximity: Key West-Cuba (1977)

6. Real de Catorce, a Mexican ghost town (1978)

7. San Luis Potosi, pink limestone (1979)

8. Durango, Spaghetti Westerns (1980)

9. Zacatecas, a bullring made hotel (1981)

10. Roadtrips, el Bajio (1982)

11. Los colores de Guanajuato (1983)

12. Roadtrips, lakes (1984)

13. Roeadtrips, Tap, Jazz and Christmas (1985)

14. Guadalajara, Barroco extravagance (1986)

15. El Faro de Mazatlan, lighthouse on a hill (1987)

16. Roadtrip, Mexico to Canada across the Rockies (1988)

17. Flying solo, Montana, big sky country (1989)

18. North-South, Tsawwaseen-Pt. Roberts (1990)

19. Roadtrip, Guadalajara to Grand Cannon (1991)

20. Flying solo, Escuela de Chicago (1992)

21. Mexican Modern (1993)

22. Tapalpa, Mazamitla and Barragan (1994)

23. Belen and Cabanas (1995)

24. Maraton de Sevilla, Espana (1996)

25. Esbjerg to Fano, a bridge too far (1997)

26. Nottingham, the Robinhood Marathon (1998)

27. Shakespeare, Wilde and me at Reading (1999)

28. New York, Y2K (2000)

29. Trier, ciudad Romana (2001)

30. Tracing Pyramids (2002)

31. Newcastle, Nueva Gales del Sur (2003)

32. Victoria, the garden state (2004)

33. Luna Park, sol y sombra in St Kilda (2005)

34. Singapore, the little red dot (2006)

35. First Landing, Fiji (2007)

36. The motorcycle diaries, Australia (2008)

37. The motorcycle diaries, South Africa (2009)

38. Delft, Holanda (2010)

39. The motorcycle diaries, Vietnam (2011)

40. The motorcycle diaries, Switzerland (2012)

41. Milano, la citta Ideale (2013)

42. Mantova, la piu Bella (2014)

43. Hong Kong - King Kong (2015)

44. Barcelona, Gaudi Versus Mies (2016)

45. Montalban on a Cesna, Mexico (2017)

46. Santa is in Bari…and Alicante (2018)

47. From Knossos to Xania, Crete (2019)

48. Herbert Street, my world (2020)

49. Phillip Island, the great escape (2021)

50. Tea or coffee? that is the question (2022)

51. Industrial Archaeology (2023)

(1973) I was born in this location, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, only that the picture depicts one of the larges megalopolis on earth as it looked 452 ago. Tenochtitlan was founded in the middle of lace Texcoco, on a small island which eventually became surrounded by canals, the pyramids where mainly civic and religious buildings, housing was over the water, mainly on stilts (or piloti), the place would resemble a kind of Venice.  The Spanish overthrew the Aztecs in 1521 and since, Mexico has grown to be a place that exceed 22 million inhabitants, nearly the population of Australia (25mi.) in one city.  

(1991) Grand Canyon. I visited with my father Arizona various times. Each time we drove over 2000 kilometres each way. This image depicts the landscape of Arizona as a memory. The arid, vast and open space experienced over endless hours of driving. Many memories of such trip returned in 2017 when I did a road trip to the Australia outback with my friend James Harley, we visited the Flinders ranges and Gammon national park, also drove to Kati Thanda-Lake Eire in the far-north region of South Australia. The colours and the strata at the Grand Canyon creates a unique and memorable experience.    

(2016) I should have brought Barcelona a lot earlier in this collection, precisely 20 years earlier. In 1996 after completing my architecture studies in Seville y relocated to Barcelona. A city that has always been an inspiration to architects and creatives. Not only because of the Gaudi legacy but also that of the urban planner Cerda, the World Expos site of 1929 and the city revival that lead into the 1992 Olympics. In 1996 I experienced my first international Architecture congress with exciting work being exhibited and names such as Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Herzog & De Meuron, and Ricardo Legorreta amongst others, on the podium.  The above canvas depicts four views, including interiors and landscape buildings by Antonio Gaudi. I visited all four buildings many times during my stay there, and returned in 2006, 2014 and in 2016. Starting from top-right and going clockwise we can see La Casa Batlo, interior of the Sagrada Familia church, looking up into a lightwell, then Casa Mila (La Pedrera or the quarry) all three Gaudi's buildings, seems unfair as their are other great catalan architects of the perriod such as Josep Maria Jujol, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Lluís Domènech i Montaner who did De Sant Pau hospital, true jewel of the art noveau movement and that still operates a cultural centre and visited in recent times.

(2000) New York, NY Y2K, it is December1997, I live in the UK. The paranoia revolving a blackout at the turn of the century is tangible. All the discussion is around the bug that will drive crazy all clocks jumping from 1999 into 2000. I went back to New York to celebrate Christmas of 1999 and the new year of 2000. Nothing really happened, at least, for a while. This image depicts my way to visualise in abstract ways some of the emblematic buildings of New York, including the Guggenheim Museum by Central Park, the WTC Twin towers, the Flatiron corner building (triangular floorplate), the Citycorp Center, the giggzaw roof at the Metropolitan Museum and Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, NY state, where I spent a winter during the early literature review for my PhD.  

Guillermo.Aranda-Menaⓒ2023