Programma —

BolaBellamátic is a project developed by La Más Bella, an artistic collective of two people from Madrid (Spain). La Más Bella (The Most Beautiful) promotes and carries out art projects specifically conceived to be published through alternative channels to the conventional world of publishing. Since our first edition in 1993 we have made more than 30 editions and projects joining the worlds of experimental contemporary art and the world of publishing.

In 2001 we bought a real automatic vending machine and transformed it to sell La Más Bella editions and many other works of art, art-books, independent magazines, developed in collaboration with many artists. It was the first BELLAMÁTIC machine. From then we have experimented with automatic vending machines (very popular in every corner in our country) to promote experimental works in the fields of contemporary art and poetry, video, music, etc.

Last year we introduced the BOLABELLAMÁTIC project. We bought some popular vending machines that sell candies and small toys into plastic balls at a very popular price (1 or 2 euro) in public spaces. There are millions of these ball-machines in every corner in Spain. We adapted these machines to sell small pieces of art into plastic balls and called them BOLABELLAMÁTIC machines. We invite artists to make small and cheap pieces of art to be sold in the BolaBellamátic machines, wherever they travel thanks to the invitation of festivals, galleries, artists…

La Más Bella is going to install four BolaBellamátic machines in Riga in four different public spaces for the White Night, and invite some artists, both Spanish and Latvian, to make pieces of art to be sold into a plastic ball at a very cheap price: 1 lat.

Participating artists:  Fernando del Cubo, Daniel Silvo, Anete Melece, Krišs Salmanis, Irīna Špičaka.

Anete Melece
Flip book
Hold the book with left hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of the other hand.
Anete Melece is drawing illustrations and comics, creating animations and making packaging design.
She has graduated department of Visual Communication at Art academy of Latvia.

Krišs Salmanis
Robots Don’t Feel
DIY T-shirt designs – position the robots exactly where and how you want them to function.
Use iron and precision.

Irina Shpichaka is a student of the art of life inspired by voices and noises.
”New Friends”
I make them for great interplay, the process of utilization. I use my slightly pornographic photos / drawings / Latvian journals from the 70ties and 80ties / tights / dolls  / porolon / mutation /  plastic /  safety pins and badges.

Enjoy using it.

Fernando del Cubo
Leather jacket and badge
In July 1984 the rock band The Rolling Stones played for the first time in Madrid. I was fifteen years old when I attended this concert, it was my first concert. For this first occasion I wear a leather jacket, despite of the forty degrees Celsius that were forecasted for that evening. Shortly before the beggining of the concert the clouds were presaging a storm. Exactly when the group started playing the first song a really loud thunder sounds. Right next to me a junkie said: “brother…. The Stones have hired GOD”. The leather jacket over my head protected me from such great amount of rain falling this legendary night!
This artistic piece called “Leather jacket and badge” is a remembrance and also a final evocation of a “rock era”, as a badge of adolescence full of shattered dreams and frustrated youthful hopes. The leather jacket has been divided into 150 parts, every part has been riched with an essential element of the rock aesthetic: a badge. Every piece of the leather jacket has been signed and numbered, so if you get all the 150 parts you could rebuild the original jacket.

Daniel Silvo
Seventeen Folds

Seventeen is the number of folds required to make a little paper bird made with a bank note. This piece, with an exact value, clearly shows how much I am spending on it, and thus clearly shows -thanks to the title- the technical difficulty of making the piece.
In the piece “Seventeen Folds”  a bank note becomes an object, redeem and dignified. I convert the “medium of exchange” in “object of exchange”, so in an art object.
http://danielsilvo.spaces.live.com

More info: www.lamasbella.org