RAFAEL PARRATORO
Kinetic and Optical Artist. Moiré. Augmented Reality. Public Art Commissions. Art Licensing.
GMP AWARDS (USA 2025)
Commissioned by Google to design and fabricate the Google Maps Platform Awards 2025, a series of sculptural trophies presented to the winners of the annual awards of the world's most widely used mapping platform. Each piece fuses kinetic abstraction and resin into a sculptural form that embodies the intersection of technology, navigation, and art. The commission positions Parratoro as a reference in the field of artistic recognition objects at a global scale, following the tradition of brands and organizations that entrust the design of their trophies to artists of international standing.
QUANTUM GAP (Arg 2023)
Monumental sculpture titled "Resquicio Cuántico" part of the outdoor permanent collection at Museo Campo, Cañuelas. The work brings Parratoro's geometric and optical language to sculptural scale within a natural environment, generating a dialogue between the mathematical precision of the forms and the landscape that surrounds them. The title introduces a conceptual dimension that exceeds the visual: the "quantum gap" as an opening, as a space between states, as a condition of possibility. The work is part of the museum's permanent collection and represents the most enduring institutional presence of the artist in Argentina to date.
LOLLAPALOOZA (Arg 2022)
As invited artist at Lollapalooza Argentina 2022, Parratoro intervened the festival's main sculptural logo across both its physical and digital dimensions simultaneously. The physical intervention transformed the iconic entrance sculpture, while an augmented reality layer superimposed an interactive experience accessible through a phone. The work was experienced by hundreds of thousands of attendees over the course of the festival, positioning kinetic and optical art within one of the largest cultural events in Latin America.
DIGITAL PLASTICITY (Arg 2023)
Solo exhibition at Artlab, Buenos Aires, presenting digital practice as a formal and conceptual extension of the optical and kinetic tradition. The show proposes that Parratoro's digital work does not constitute a separate branch of his practice, but the continuation of the same questions about perception, movement, and geometry through different means. At a moment when the distinction between digital and physical art remains a subject of debate in the contemporary art field, the exhibition takes a clear position: the medium changes, the question does not.
GARDEL AWARDS (Arg 2023)
Conception and direction of the complete artistic concept for the Premios Gardel 2023, the most important ceremony in the Argentine music industry, held at Movistar Arena, Buenos Aires. The commission included the integration of optical art and augmented reality into the overall design of the event, as well as a giant kinetic stage curtain turning the ceremony into a coherent, high-impact visual experience. The intervention brought Parratoro's language from the gallery space into a live event of national reach, broadcast and covered by the country's leading media outlets.
POP AR BOOK (USA 2025)
Interactive art book merging printed geometry with augmented reality, allowing each of its 26 works to activate in three-dimensional space through the reader's phone. Funded on Kickstarter with a "Project We Love" badge, a distinction awarded by the platform to its highest-quality and highest-impact projects, the book is currently distributed across more than 20 countries. POP AR represents the most complete synthesis of Parratoro's practice to date: the physical printed object and the digital layer coexist within the same system, neither one subsidiary to the other. The book functions both as a collectible artwork and as an accessible entry point into the artist's visual universe.
US EMBASSY MAPPING (Arg 2023)
Optical intervention on the facade of Palacio Bosch, the home of the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires, commissioned for the LGBT Pride Week. Palacio Bosch is one of the most emblematic historic buildings in Buenos Aires and one of the city's highest-profile diplomatic spaces. The work brought Parratoro's geometric language into a first-tier institutional and symbolic context, proposing optical art as a vehicle for a message of inclusion and visibility in a space of significant public impact.
LANDMARK (Arg 2022)
Design and intervention of the monumental facade of Tiendas Landmark at Unicenter Shopping, Martínez, Buenos Aires. The work translates Parratoro's kinetic and optical language to architectural scale, turning the exterior surface of the retail space into a field of geometry in motion visible from the public space. The intervention operates simultaneously as an artwork and as a visual identity for the commercial space. Forbes Argentina described it as "disruptive and with movement," highlighting it as a singular case of integration between high-level art and a commercial context.
KINETIC WATCH (Japan 2016)
Collaboration with Kyoto-based handcraft watch brand Dedegumo. The result was the world's first kinetic art watch: a precision automatic mechanism incorporating two uniquely designed geometric hands capable of generating optical movement on the wearer's wrist. The project fuses Japanese artisanal watchmaking with the principles of Latin American kinetic art, producing an object that exists simultaneously as a timekeeping instrument and as a work of art in motion. The Dedegumo collaboration represents one of the most singular cases of Parratoro's artistic language being translated into an everyday object.
LA NUIT DE LA CULTURE
(Luxembourg 2024)
Participation with the work "X Universe" (with both, physical and Augmented Reality large scale works) at La Nuit de la Culture, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, within the programming of the European Capital of Culture 2022. The event brings together international artists annually for a night of free public access to culture, with an audience combining local and international visitors. Parratoro's participation in this European context extended his geographic presence to the Benelux region and placed him within the circuit of institutional cultural events of continental scale.
BUENOS AIRES OBELISK (Arg 2017)
Projection mapping intervention on the Obelisk of Buenos Aires, created to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Hospital Garrahan, one of the most important public pediatric hospitals in Latin America. The work carries a symbolic charge that is biographical and cultural in equal measure: a Venezuelan artist bringing the kinetic tradition, one of Latin America's most significant contributions to twentieth-century art, into direct contact with the most recognizable monument in his adopted country. Parratoro donated the work to the hospital, making it both an artistic intervention and an act of direct institutional support. The projection reached a massive audience in the public space and represents one of his earliest precedents in large-format urban intervention, establishing a direct antecedent for the public art practice that defines his subsequent career.