Juan A. Esteban. Artist, cultural mediator, and independent researcher. Founding trustee and president of the Kripties Foundation.
I sign my artistic practice and public writing as Juan A. Esteban; in academic and bibliographic contexts, as Juan A. Esteban Ruiz.
I trained as a painter and hold a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville. My current work addresses technology and digital culture without abandoning the craft of painting.
I articulate this through [Structural Surplus](link to pillar page), a framework for the ontology of art that, while not denying the human subject, displaces its centrality. The hypothesis: art is defined not by the author's consciousness nor by the technical complexity of the device, but by the emergence of a structural surplus within open relational systems—a difference that reorganises the field of the possible without being absorbed by the function of the system.
This framework organises the three dimensions of my work. Artistic production operates with expanded matter, writing, code, and found supports, in material pieces with a strong physical presence and in process-based works. Mediation is exercised through the Kripties Foundation, TransArte, and the Esteban-Ruiz Collection. Research is developed along the lines published on this website.
My digital presence operates deliberately on decentralised infrastructure, the AT Protocol, the same open network in which BlueSky, Eurosky, and others participate. Furthermore, the Kripties Foundation serves as a trust verifier for Eurosky on mu.social for art and culture accounts in Spanish.
Research
-> Structural Surplus. Ontology of the artistic event.
-> Recognition and Surplus (with Adolfo Cortés García).
-> Post-NFT digital art. Infrastructure, archive, and recognition.
Works are deposited in Zenodo, and registered on ORCID: 0009-0004-1206-9088.
Credentials
ORCID: 0009-0004-1206-9088: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1206-9088
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanesteban-art
Includes the TransArte newsletter — a daily publication of ongoing thought derived from the programme:
https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/transarte-7290387782852571136/
Sifa ID: https://sifa.id/p/juanesteban.art
Contact
Email address: hola@juanesteban.art
Decentralised messaging (AT Protocol): Germ DM — @juanesteban.art