A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Paloma Rincón  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Radim: Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of Daring Forever Podcast. This is my opportunity to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview, finding those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special.This week I spoke to Paloma Rincon, who is a visual artist and photographer known for bold graphic photography that juxtaposes the everyday into something entirely new.

If you know her work, you know how incredible her colors and compositions are. In our conversation, we traced her journey from analog darkroom in Mexico to Madrid, where she now lives and works. We talked about many happy accidents and why she believes taste will always be the key to great work.

And if you know her work, it's absolutely true. it was indeed a great conversations where I got to see behind the lens of what it means to be daring forever. The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Make Straight Line Perfect, and you will shortly find out what she meant by that.

If you haven't checked out a full episode yet, let me share with you these four standout moments.

Paloma Rincon: I think that I always found pleasure and the ability to focus and when I was engaging in something creative, whether it was painting. I also used to build stuff with paper, houses, and I was more interested when I was a child in building the space where my dolls will be living than to play with them.

Radim:  So it's, always been more about creating something in the physical space, painting it. So this is something that I was able to put in my work

There's something magical about Paloma's work, and as I told her in a conversation, I'm a really big fan.

I've been fan of her work since when she used to work with Serial Cut, and that's fifteen years ago, maybe even more. Her and Sergio were creating absolutely mind-boggling work, and they were doing stuff in camera, in 3D. And I found the way they built their sets and their visual storytelling was absolutely, utterly second to none.

Incredible. And obviously hearing a quote like this or hearing her talking about the fact how she was growing up and what she was doing, it makes you really join the dots because can only join dots retrospectively, never forward. And in this way, I love the fact of getting to a few dots from her explaining how she was interested more in building the space for her dolls.

And, you know, that's kind of led into her work, into what she does now, building all sorts of different sets, still life, juxtapositions of realities. Yeah, it's always magical. Even it being this rudimentary to actually find out how someone's work really came to be from their early childhood pursuits.

Paloma Rincon: yeah, I do. I remember it. We had to do our first, to shoot our first roll. It was at school. So photographed a stack of chairs that was to a wall. So it was something that was very geometric, very architectural at the same time. It was a lot of straight lines, something that has been following me, the straight lines.

And I remember going into the dark room and seeing how those lines started to show before you would even start to understand the image that was,coming from it. I do 

remember it felt special 

Radim:  Whenever there's something that is geometric and straight, it really has to be straight. And this is something I think that kind of tension that I think that you can find in my work. There's something that's like a geometric component that has to be very sleek and perfect, and then there's this other side which is organic and fluid and,more as you can find it in nature, let's say

It took me a while to understand what she meant with, you know, when something straight needs to be straight because I could see very few straight lines in Paloma's work.

There's so much to go on, uh, so much to see in what she does, and often it's organic shapes, sometimes even somehow morphing shapes that are not always, based on reality. And I was like, "What do you mean about straight line?" And when she said it, it's kind of almost like this graphic designer's mindset because there is something about, you know, placing imagery.

There's something about creating layouts or, you know, taking photography that it just has to be straight. There's a particular studio that shows up on my LinkedIn where their photos are taken at, like, fifteen degrees, and I'm thinking, "Do you guys live on the Titanic? What's going on?" 

They are beautiful people, and they do great work. But it's me, it's me kind of being here with Paloma thinking, "Yes, if it's a straight line, it has to be straight, and for the rest, it can be absolutely anything." despite Paloma having this incredible signature style, I do like that little insight about a detail that she puts into her work

Paloma Rincon: I was there by myself just, putting together stuff, and suddenly I had this piece of a disco ball that my neighbor had gave me, and I just took it. It was crystals. I love all things reflective and refractive and playing with these very photogenic things. So I just got that disco ball because I was also playing with metallic stuff.

And then I had a disco melon, so I set them together and I was Whoa, these two belong together." So the half disco melon I had was empty, so I had to paste every single little crystal into the disco melon. And, that was the first of those images when then I started to pair the,ice cream cone I had with the cactus, like, all by shape.

Radim: And, this is where the second part of the series started, somehow by accident, by being, in the creative flow completely. 

People like Paloma made the world a better place, and bear with me for a second, because they explore their creativity and their curiosity for the world in the most beautiful way.

So here in Paloma talking about how one of her most famous pieces came together. It's just putting things together that potentially shouldn't be together, yet they are destined to be together. her piece, which is a disco ball cut through into a melon, is one of these things that really puts through her working philosophy about the juxtaposition of the real life.

Because when you think about comedians making jokes, they lead you somewhere, but you make your assumption, and then they release you in a totally different direction, and it makes you laugh or makes you upset or makes you triggered. You know, all of this happens because we come, uh, to certain situations with preloaded or pre- preset answers.

And I think being able to see Paloma's work where things that shouldn't be are the things with the things that they shouldn't be coupled with, it's always magical because after all, we need people like her to be showing us of the things that should and shouldn't go together.

Paloma Rincon: Because at the end, I work a lot in the,physical world, but it captured and,it lasts In the digital space at the end. Maybe making it stay in a different way in the digital world. I'm, exploring different things because I'm very conscious about the fact that things are changing, and I do want to stay connected with what I want to do so you just have to start doing things in AI."

I didn't do it when everything was starting to, get done in 3D, like CGI. I was still doing my things physical, even if I was directly competing with,that other approach that brought also s- a lot of solutions to the commercial industry. So where I find joy and where I find that I have something to say because what I grow comes from the process that I follow.

So I'm, I'm,starting to stick to it and to not hear that much the voices. I do hear-- 

I do learn a little bit about AI. 

I want to stay connected. I don't want to, not know anything about it. I mean,as a tool, 

it's a great tool, but I don't want that to replace my practice and the foundation of my,way to create and my craft

Radim:  Of course, most of our conversations at the moment are hovering over the topic of AI and generative AI and AI generally what it is and what it means for us. When I see people like Paloma and many others with a super strong signature style, you know that anything like this doesn't really derail their confidence or signature styles or the ways of working because 

 their business practice is rooted in a long-term vision, signature styles, in creating bold imagery exploring curiosity for endless creativity will always make a human that's been on a path of explorations for so long, it will make them absolutely unbeatable by AI.

Because AI can smash a lot of things together, and we used to do lots of things in Photoshop, in more lengthy way, doing thing, all sorts of things, creating scamps and, and mock-ups just to see if it would work or not. But with AI, you just get there quicker. And it was my friend Alana Radek from Design Is Yummy at the end of the previous season when she talked about the fact that, yes, we have more time to think.

The execution sometimes is easier and faster thanks to things like AI, but actually it's the thinking time which is now invaluable because it gives us, a bit more space to think about what we want to do, how we wanna change things. And in Paloma's case is actually how to find the best possible juxtaposition and almost visual psychedelics onto her style that bring something new and fresh into the world.

 it was great to chat to Paloma. Loads of great insights about what she does and how she does it, because I've been fan of her, as I told you, for so long, and it's great to know more about what she does Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode, and I'll see you back next week on Monday with my conversation with Simon Dixon