Spring-Summer 2015 Calendar. DIA:Beacon (Dia Art Foundation), Beacon, New York, USA 16/8/15
In his "Loophole" series Prieto works by extracting details from different things such as the artist’s own Visa application photo, a Mastercard, a 3 Peso bill with Che Guevara on it, an airplane ticket from Havana to Milan or a copy of a painting by Cézanne found in a catalogue from a public library.
With this simple action he disrupts the material of the original objects and, if those are publicly accessible, he creates a new personal story in a different place. With this thought his central idea reaches its final complexity.
Loophole also refers to this never-ending reaction created by Prieto’s acts of vandalism: taking reality as its origin and using a fragment of it to create an abstract artwork. This abstract work takes you back to the original work, which is now eternally changed. This is a symbolic act of how a loophole allows an individual to use some gap in the restrictions or requirements of the law for personal advantage without technically breaking the law. It then becomes a resistance against the system.
With Loophole, Prieto takes his work one step further in the direction of the minimal by creating something as subtle and simplified as a punch-hole, yet filled with intense meaning and depth of theory.