Rubén Díaz de Corcuera Díaz (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1964) has an honours degree in Fine Art and an Advanced Diploma in semiotics of the artistic image from the University of the Basque Country (UPV), a technical qualification in Infography and Numerical Image from CINT, and a Masters’ in Journalism from the newspaper El Correo and UPV.
He has worked as an illustrator and graphic artist with various newspapers. He was the founding partner of Eykon, S.L., one of Vitoria’s pioneering companies in 3D animation. Recently, he has worked in the audiovisual department at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre. He also has produced work as an abstract painter and video creator.
The research grant awarded to Rubén Díaz de Corcuera will fund research into Extreme signs in contemporary art: the super icon, the ultra sign, the abstract and the whole.
Paraphrasing the semiotics of the Mu group: “I can be tricked by an iconic sign, but then for me it is no longer the sign of an object but rather that object itself”. Or as Umberto Eco points out: “the complete iconic sign for the Queen of England would be the Queen of England herself”, except that this type of sign, according to Eco, lacks meaning. The author of this project is interested, within the sphere of contemporary art, precisely in iconic signs that are about to complete the deception, which he refers to as super icons, as well as iconic signs that hypothetically may have transgressed said limit, which he calls ultra signs (abundantly described in the genre of science fiction). At the other extreme, the researcher situates the abstract, since the characteristic feature of iconism is the assumption of an object or reference point that is ‘similar’ to the sign, and the characteristic feature of the abstract is the unattainability or absence of a reference point for this type, the lack of an iconic reference point. It is from this perspective that the author aims to explain expressions of the abstract as diverse as music, an unusual and expressive creature such as Merlet’s scorpionfish, a cosmic object such as the cat’s eye nebula, an ionospheric phenomenon such as the aurora borealis and artistic objects like a Pollock painting, a sculpture by Chillida or a photograph by Adam Fuss, to name just a few examples. The last object of study proposed by the researcher is remarkable: the whole universe, in other words, the universe in its entirety. Taking the whole as a sign, the pertinent question would be: what kind of sign are we talking about? An icon or an index? Is the universe a representation or an abstract?
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