This site is the digital extension of the forthcoming monograph Fantastic Plastic: Migration and Transformation in the Work of Pepe López, published by KINOSAITO. It makes available video documentation, images, and ongoing activities that go beyond the printed edition.

Pepe López has worked with found and discarded plastic for nearly three decades, collecting it from the streets of Caracas, London, Paris, and New York, and transforming it into tapestries, sculptures, installations, garments, and performances that address migration, consumption, and identity.

Este sitio es la extensión digital de la próxima monografía Fantastic Plastic: Migration and Transformation in the Work of Pepe López, publicada por KINOSAITO. Pone a disposición documentación en vídeo, imágenes y actividades en curso que van más allá de la edición impresa.

Pepe López ha trabajado con plástico encontrado y desechado durante casi tres décadas, recogiéndolo de las calles de Caracas, Londres, París y Nueva York, y transformándolo en tapices, esculturas, instalaciones, prendas y performances que abordan la migración, el consumo y la identidad.

ponchos / ana / KINOSAITO

the unknown and its poetics

Ana is part of my ongoing Ponchos series. The piece is constructed from seven white Carrefour delivery bags sourced in Paris, transformed from everyday plastic into a translucent shell, its top end embroidered in shades of white, gray, and black which provides a stark, tactile contrast, a labor-intensive, intimate gesture against industrial materiality.

When worn, Ana fully envelops the body. Arms and hands disappear beneath its surface. It evokes the formality of a wedding gown while simultaneously suggesting a shroud. Yet, under shifting light, the body inside flickers into view, suspended between presence and absence. This ephemeral tension, the fragile balance between concealment and revelation, is central to the work's emotional charge.

Suspended on the wall, Ana transforms into sculpture. Drifting as solidified material, it becomes a blooming flower, an open shell, a virginal vulva, simultaneously vulnerable and resilient. It stands at the intersection of softness and structure. It is an offering.

This piece carries the weight of existing between languages, systems, and spaces of belonging. It does not tell a grand narrative but communicates through subtle gestures, through materials, silences, and the shifting contours of a body both visible and withheld. In performance, Ana has functioned as both screen and veil, inviting play, concealment, and emergence.

This exhibition presents a group of works by international artists that live or have lived away from their home country and have been impacted by cross-cultural influences. KINOSAITO Art Center provides more than a venue, it creates a vital context. Many thanks for the invitation.

Ana forma parte de mi serie en curso Ponchos. La pieza está construida con siete bolsas blancas de reparto de Carrefour conseguidas en París, transformadas de plástico cotidiano en una capa translúcida, cuyo extremo superior está bordado en tonos de blanco, gris y negro, proporcionando un contraste táctil y austero.

Cuando se lleva puesta, Ana envuelve completamente el cuerpo. Los brazos y las manos desaparecen bajo su superficie. Evoca la formalidad de un vestido de novia y al mismo tiempo sugiere un sudario.

Suspendida en la pared, Ana se transforma en escultura. A la deriva como material solidificado, se convierte en una flor en flor, una concha abierta, una vulva virginal. Es una ofrenda.

Esta exposición presenta obras de artistas internacionales. KINOSAITO Art Center crea un contexto vital. Muchas gracias por la invitación.

crisálida / ruya maps / espacio monitor

Two hundred objects from my family home in Caracas, wrapped one by one in transparent plastic and suspended in an eighteen-metre installation.

Doscientos objetos de mi casa familiar en Caracas, envueltos uno por uno en plástico transparente y suspendidos en una instalación de dieciocho metros.

"Crisálida is not just about him. One encounters a gap — the shape of an absence felt individually and collectively — and an invitation: a hand reaching out to bring spectators, and their memories, into the chrysalis. The installation is about the decisions anybody who has to leave their country has to make."

— Irina Troconis, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, University of California Press, 2025

"Crisálida no es solo sobre él. Uno se encuentra con una brecha, la forma de una ausencia sentida individual y colectivamente, y una invitación: una mano que se tiende para traer a los espectadores, y sus memorias, hacia la crisálida."

— Irina Troconis, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, University of California Press, 2025

plastic cartographies

Walking Canal Street, New York, camera in hand. As I move through the city I pixelate the footage, the urban landscape dissolves into blocks of color, geometry, density. That pixelated image then becomes the source material for large tapestries made from vinyl, scotch tape on plastic tarpaulin: the video and the physical work are two stages of the same transformation. I translate those data-cartographies, already abstract, already geometric, into material form. The street becomes a map. The map becomes a tapestry. The tapestry is made of the same plastic that I find in the streets.

Caminando por Canal Street, Nueva York, con la cámara en mano. A medida que me muevo por la ciudad pixelo las imágenes, el paisaje urbano se disuelve en bloques de color, geometría, densidad. Esa imagen pixelada se convierte luego en el material de origen de grandes tapices hechos de vinilo y cinta scotch sobre lona plástica. Traduzco esas cartografías de datos, ya abstractas, ya geométricas, a una forma material. La calle se convierte en un mapa. El mapa se convierte en un tapiz. El tapiz está hecho del mismo plástico que encuentro en las calles.

fantastic plastic: migration and transformation in the work of pepe lópez

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Pepe López has worked with found materials for nearly three decades, addressing memory, transformation, migration, diaspora, and identity long before these became urgent subjects of public discussion. Fantastic Plastic follows the development of this practice: how a material defined by its lack of value becomes, through López's sustained formal discipline, an instrument for portraying contemporary society.

The practice began in 1998 at Gasworks and InIVA in London, during a UNESCO-Aschberg residency, when López, having spent his budget on a single glass piece, began collecting plastic from the street. It reaches its most recent expression in the wearable plastic sculptures activated at KINOSAITO in Verplanck, New York, in collaboration with musicians and dancers — the direct occasion for this book.

Ambulantes stages a migration that unfolds entirely within a single city: a person moving through their own streets as if already a stranger to them. The Ponchos series, activated decades later at KINOSAITO, stages the same movement turned inward — a wearer's sense of self, shifted by the material itself, crossing from one state of feeling into another. Read this way, migration and transformation form a single movement, traced once externally and once internally — which is why both words stand together in this book's title.

This digital site is an extension of the project, making available video documentation, images, and ongoing activities that go beyond the printed edition.

Pepe López ha trabajado con materiales encontrados durante casi tres décadas, abordando la memoria, la transformación, la migración, la diáspora y la identidad. Fantastic Plastic sigue el desarrollo de esta práctica: cómo un material definido por su falta de valor se convierte en un instrumento para retratar la sociedad contemporánea.

Este sitio digital es una extensión del proyecto, poniendo a disposición documentación en vídeo, imágenes y actividades en curso que van más allá de la edición impresa.

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KINOSAITO is an interdisciplinary art center located in Verplanck, New York, founded in memory of the painter Kikuo Saito and led by Mikiko Ino. The center supports artists through residencies, exhibitions, and publications. kinosaito.org ↗

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