A journey through the universe of Arturo Prins, the artist of emojis, hitchhiking, Buddhism and Godard

“Joquiti poquiti moquiti mer, everything can fit here.” To the rhythm of this magical chorus, Merlin the Charmer made his belongings fly playfully and obediently through the tree house, in the forest of Brocéliande (Brittany), where he lived in the time of King Arthur. And this is how one can imagine the 51-year-old Argentine artist and filmmaker Arturo Prins: directing more than 700 of his works to be placed in his room, before opening the door to his studio on Madrid's Gran Vía. .

The walls and ceilings are covered with maps or various wrapping papers, depending on the room. Dozens of stacked works appear throughout the space: large, small, esoteric, naïve, erotic, pop, realistic, conceptual, right side up, inside out. A visual explosion that excites the senses. A colorful spider web carefully woven, with countless threads to pull.

The very essence of his painting, a film tribute to the French film director Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) and a hitchhiking trip from Madrid to Shambala (Mongolia) are three of the main strands of this network that began to weave in 1991. It was then that Prins settled in Madrid, abandoning his dream of being an airline pilot and taking the tests to study Fine Arts at the Complutense University. “I got it the second time, like Goya did,” he says, smiling.

For this versatile Buenos Aires native, awarded the honorary prize at the 11th International Biennial of Sports in Fine Arts presented by Queen Sofía in 1995, art is play, discovery. This explains the diversity of registers in his work, in which he acts like a child who is always tempted to explore new things and delve into different themes and styles. “In my work it is possible to find common threads, but I am very unorthodox. I like the change and fertility that variety generates. I am very playful, and for this reason I am ostracized by gallery owners,” says Prins.

An exhibition of his paintings, even if individual, seems collective given the visual plurality it handles. A risky bet for the galleries in a society that, according to the author, has become superficial and has lost the ability to link and make metaphors: to go from the small to the cosmic, from the everyday to the transcendental. Quality that appears in his work as a painter.

To understand this artistic tidal wave based on very intimate experiences and in which each piece is a surprise, it is necessary to delve into every detail. His creations are full of Eastern symbolism, connections with esoteric Buddhism and Indian philosophy, sensual rituals of the Kama Sutra and leaps towards Western eroticism, all mixed with mythology, metaphysical abstractions, naive paintings and conceptual pop pieces. This diversity is its added differential characteristic, said in advertising terms. And precisely in advertising he worked as an art director in agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and Contrapunto.

Throughout history, artists of different kinds have stood out who, far from being pigeonholed, have been characterized by delving into a wide spectrum of disciplines and have not for that reason been considered banal, but the other way around: from Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 ) to Francis Picabia (1879-1953) —with whom Prins feels very identified—, passing through the Czech Jiří Dokoupil (69 years old) today. “The same thing happens to me with painting, cinema and even photography, with which I have many dabbles,” he comments.

The web that draws the universe of this artist from the lineage of painter-directors such as David Lynch or Jean Cocteau is woven, in part, with a passion for cinema, where he began his career in 2001. Some of his more than 20 films have been awarded at national and international festivals or have received important mentions, as happened with Autopsy of a love (2014), candidate for best documentary at the Goya in 2016.

This screenwriter, producer and film director begins the year with the premiere of his latest two productions at the Madrid-based Pequeno Cine Estudio. Human being, his most transcendental work according to him, can be seen star
ting February 2. The medium-length film I Have Nothing to Say, already in theaters, is a tribute to Jean-Luc Godard. In it he narrates the meeting he had on September 13, 2020 with the director of At the end of the getaway at his home in Rolle (Switzerland). Prins shows up at the filmmaker's residence, whom she takes out of his shelter without him feeling like it, in an attempt to talk with him without falling into clichés. The images in this documentary are the last in which the famous French director appears alive on the big screen. Curiously, on that same date and in that same house but two years later, he would die by assisted suicide. A magical synchronicity for the author.

The tribute to Godard, which arises from his desire to meet him in person, is a letter of love and gratitude to someone for whom he feels admiration and whose influence is present in his filmography. “In the film I partially imitate his work technique, although I am sweeter. Faced with the complexity of Godard's cinema, for which you have to be very intellectually prepared, my film is very easy. I also make an Eastern metaphysical game. The spirit of the old man who has died is reincarnated in a child, in Buenos Aires,” he explains. Little Godard, always with a chocolate cigar between his fingers and sunglasses that remind us of the father of the new wave, gives voice to the French film director with fragments of his reflections, which invite the viewer to think, to connect with the metaphor he wants to tell us and to understand the power of the image. “There will not be a new Godard, but his teachings remain,” says Prins.

Master and disciple are united by a cinema that invites reflection and moves away from simple entertainment with one of those Godardian pills that are mentioned in the film and that move the author: “Everything is interesting. It is possible to make a film with nothing, because with nothing you can show everything.”

However, both are separated by a chasm between the freedom of one to get out of the distribution chains and the need of the other to enter them and get their work seen. “Being independent and not having the support of a production company, unfortunately, takes its toll on me,” says the Argentine director.

Regarding the experimental work Human being, is an essay in which Prins, a student of Eastern philosophy, invites us to think that we are going to evolve towards other higher realms, that we are going to be stars almost without being aware of it. With a camera in plan voyeur, films the activity of people on a beach on the French Riviera and reflects on the idea that a biped is much more than a being that eats, defecates, loves, ages and dies. Thus, for 62 minutes, Arturo Prins connects the images with a text from esoteric Buddhism, extracted from The treatise on cosmic fire dictated by a Tibetan teacher to Alice Bailey.

“Perhaps this will be a film for humanity in 200 years, due to the concepts it handles,” says its author. “This is a type of cinema that also interests me, a transcendental cinema that tries to find the beauty of the human being, the deep things that affect us,” he adds.

With this thought always present, Prins continued weaving his work and in 2022 he embarked on a project that took him hitchhiking from Madrid to Shambala (Mongolia). The idea of ​​finding Shangri-La, a fictional place hidden between the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert, arose in 2000, when he retired for six months in Italy to study the texts of Buddhism.

“My intention was to check if man is so generous as to take me so far, to that magical place, where higher beings exist, only by the strength of the heart. The journey to Shambala was a path of human flowers. A journey of generosity and kindness from all the people who took me: a total of 120 drivers who helped me cross 12 countries, travel 12,628 kilometers and reach the heart of the Gobi. It was a miracle”.

Only two incidents, almost anecdotal, shook his purpose. The first occurred in Girona, where he even thought about turning around when he couldn't find anyone to continue advancing. A moment of great frustration for having to leave so close to home. The second, in Tashanta, the border between Russia and Mongolia through which it is prohibited to cross on foot. There he was subjected to a thorough interrogation in which he felt the fear caused by the vulnerability of traveling alone, with the bare minimum in a backpack.

During the 101 days of travel – 82 until reaching Shambhala, plus those spent meditating in the Gobi Desert – he faced loneliness, painted the landscapes along the way and wrote a logbook with the details of the experience he will carry. to the movies when you feel the need and what happened matures.

From thread to thread, from color to color, between reality and the afterlife, Prins lives entangled in art, creating non-stop during his retreats anywhere in the world while continuing to support contemporary art on his YouTube channel, Art 4u.

Reached the magic of meditation in Shambala and silence in the last scene of I have nothing to say, with the snow falling on the water, the visual web of this artist will continue to grow between reflections on the reality of the human being and the esoteric world, in search of his interior and a great viewer. Arturo Prins wanted to be a pilot. He now he flies free.

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