Contemporary art from Valparaíso

A selection of works developed through found materials and systems of social organisation, ranging from cigarette butts to waiting tickets and parking cards.

• “TRANSITO” — Cartography of Discarded Materials
• “Tiempo y Espera” (Time and Waiting)
• “Código Interno” (Internal Code)

Each section can be linked to a specific QR code in an exhibition space, directing visitors to this page.

“TRANSITO” proposes a sustained reflection on the relationship between the individual and the urban landscape. Through the accumulation of cigarette butts, the work constructs a cartography that records presence in a specific time and place.

The cigarette butt as a record

Each cigarette butt operates as a container of information: genetic traces, wear and oxidation. It tells the story of an instant. The composition is formed by superimposing each element through what I call modular repetition, creating a cartography in which the cigarette butt assumes the role of a pictorial element.

Layers, traces and displacement

• Lipstick: lipstick marks reveal experiences and female presences within the landscape.
• Stains: traces that point to gestures, encounters and accidents inscribed in a moment in time.
• Advertising: fragments that become a mirror of consumer society and of the ways in which we relate to information.
• Movement and memory: as ephemeral objects, cigarette butts travel from one place to another, carrying the memory of an instant.

Direct work link: for example, a QR code can point to https://fernandotorterolo.art/en/#transito.

As I move through the city, I encounter the numbered waiting tickets used by shops and public-facing businesses to manage the flow of people. These small pieces of paper represent an organisational system that assigns a number and a moment in time, directing our experience within a broader social structure.

The work is constructed as a composition reflecting the different directions of global communication within that social system. The tickets become symbols of the interaction between the individual and society: minimal records that order, distribute and administer our presence in the city.

Direct work link: for example, a QR code can point to https://fernandotorterolo.art/en/#tiempo-espera.

This work explores the relationship between the individual and the system, transferring the territory onto a plane through the use of parking cards as both material and visual code.

The work becomes a metaphor for the way the system conditions and controls us through numbers and codes. The repetition of the cards generates a visual pattern that reinforces the idea of the system's omnipresence in our lives.

At the same time, the work invites reflection on how we submit to these codes and numbers without questioning them, accepting their logic as a natural part of the urban landscape and of our everyday experience.

Direct work link: for example, a QR code can point to https://fernandotorterolo.art/en/#codigo-interno.

Created in 2014, these works emerged from the need to give greater visual value to the artistic process. The process begins with the collection of cigarette butts, which are then transferred to the support, always from a perspective connected to painting and its expressive possibilities.

This exercise arises from observing unsanitary materials and from the intention to grant them a different aesthetic condition. The work considers how elements treated as waste can be reorganised to acquire new visual and symbolic readings.

Direct work link: for example, a QR code can point to https://fernandotorterolo.art/en/#opticos.