Ten x Ten is a collaboration between visual artists and musicians exploring visual and auditory interaction. By challenging artists to conceptualize their work across media, Ten x Ten asks participants to stretch and expand their creative process. Through producing a limited edition compilation and public presentation of the resulting artworks, Ten x Ten documents, celebrates, and promotes Chicago’s artistic community.

In regards to the form we –instead of patterns– are observing the spaces in between them. These repetitive divisions that interrupt a line, or define a beat’s closing/opening.

Our vehicle will be the mouth, our mouth, any mouth for that matter, those that surround us among family and friends, each of them seem very unique either still or gesticulating. They will tell us a story of voluntary death, the life-in-despair and death-in-excess, swapped for life-in-excess and death-in-despair. Each of these mental states linked by events that trigger and define these patterns.

Conceptually, the dialogue between sound and visuals would serve as reflective space for the audience to think about these spaces linking their own mundane routines.

Carlos Matallana is a Bogotá-born and Chicago-based visual artist, a teacher, and a New Tech Curriculum developer. He has taught graphic design, web design, and comics in different after-school programs around Chicago since 2005.