Biomes dissects the logic of Andre Baldovino’s artmaking process. He frames the exhibition as a manual for understanding his practice by rendering it legible in exercises in reconfigurations. Symbolically conceiving them as “biomes,” the present works are akin to worlds conjured from a machinery of objects, formal elements, and ideas—engineered according to principles that bisect art and biology, and ultimately demonstrating the significance of negotiations in his worldmaking.

Baldovino prefaces the exhibition with 36 glass containers occupying three shelving units. Fashioned after aquariums or terraria, they emerge as the primary illustrative device of his creative process; the works were assembled through a logic that mimics procedural generation in video game maps, where an algorithm is instructed to generate seemingly infinite content out of a finite inventory of assets and code. While this process may initially appear as exclusively mathematical or formulaic, spontaneity comes into play when the program randomizes the combinations and through the human player’s decisions made in-game. From these, two salient points may be observed: (1) the tendency to negotiate competing imperatives (e.g. infinite content generated from a finite inventory; computers cooperating with human users), and (2) negotiation as a strategy of progress and survival amid a volatile world.

To make each installation, Baldovino picked out objects then coded them into terraria drawing on his background in artistic composition. He designates this method as a substrate-subject-support system: materials such as soil, cement, and lava rocks form the ecosystem’s substrate or foundation which anchors the subject—plants, driftwood, pyramids, and other articles that serve as the focal point of the terrarium. Any visual imbalance in the arrangement of the two components is tempered by the support, including moss, wooden shapes, and bioballs. Although these objects are sourced, foraged, or purchased arbitrarily, their resultant presentation remains within the extent of the artist’s personal style of composition. Notice also that they are derived from both natural and manmade sources, but the line delineating their distinction is blurred during instances of artistic manipulations performed on organic subjects, as in the case of a twig coated in bright, crimson latex paint. Thus, by formulating this three-fold classification, the artist is essentially isolating the elements and dissecting their relations that often emerge as contradictory. 

The same approach may be extended to decode the canvas works. As records of Baldovino’s evolving history of teetering between landscape and abstraction, the formal elements and techniques that comprise the paintings converge to betray visual tensions. Organic forms conceal architectural shapes, rigid contours puncture fluid surfaces, and representation collapses into abstract figures. In this collusion of contradictory tendencies, tension emerges between horizontal and vertical lines, alluding to his developing interest in the conceptual opposition between growth—figured through the horizontal—and progress, articulated through the vertical.

In sum, what the artist performs is a continuous recalibration of existing elements gathered from his surroundings and from his artistic repertoire. While video games rely on decisions performed by both computer and player, Baldovino generates his worlds—currently emerging in the form of terraria and paintings—through the calculations and spontaneous acts of his own creative negotiations. In both contexts, the objective is to survive: to strike an equilibrium of elements and to sustain life, whether in a game, in a physical aquarium, or on canvas. In this light, Biomes positions Baldovino’s practice as an open system—one that continually generates, negotiates, and reprograms from within its own evolving conditions.

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-Chesca Santiago