STORIES The Art of Engineering meets the Engineering of Art

Sofia Salazar is an artist from Argentina, living and working in Barcelona. We sat down with her to discuss the artwork she recently made for TAG Heuer, interpreting our beloved Monaco watch through two pieces in distinct media, both of which complement the artistry of this iconic timepiece with her signature expressive beauty. In the end, we loved them so much that we wanted to share some behind-the-scenes insights into her practice and her perspective.  All TAG Heuer enthusiasts have an eye for style, after all…

Salazar has a background in textile design, and comes from a ‘family of makers’ – which is perhaps why her work often displays an intimate craftsmanship, moving fluidly between the worlds of art and design. Just like any great watchmaker! She has always explored and experimented with various techniques, learning as much as possible about the different methods and media she is drawn to. Recently, this curiosity has drawn her almost entirely into printmaking – from Cyanotype to linocut, woodcut, screenprinting, and more. About a year ago, she began to explore the process of embossing – imprinting shapes and forms into paper. 

For the pieces commissioned by TAG Heuer, Salazar chose two distinct printing media: woodcut and embossing. With two very different final results, these methods both require intensive advance planning, careful design, and multiple trials to create the finished product without mishap. Let’s take a closer look at each of these processes, and find out a bit more about Sofia’s artistic choices when interpreting the TAG Heuer Monaco. 

In our conversation, Salazar explained to us what ‘reduction’ woodcut printing looks like; it’s a painstaking process that requires a huge amount of advance planning – in reverse. Not for the faint of heart, reverse woodcut is a high-stakes art form with many steps, in which mistakes cannot be corrected.  

For example, once a mark has been made by carving away from the single piece of wood, one layer at a time, nothing can turn back time and replace it. Each layer of carving corresponds to a single colour of pigment which is then transferred from the wood block onto paper using a careful system of tabs and pins, to ensure that each layer of colour aligns perfectly with the previous layer of printing. 

This means a rigorous plan of action long before any tools are used, imagining the image both backward and forward in a feat of logistical engineering.  Samples, trials, and first attempts must be made to confirm results and ensure a reliable outcome for the final piece. But this complexity has an interesting result – the ultimate limited edition print, which can never be repeated, once the first layer of colour has been carved into.  Salazar describes this way of working as particularly special – “You start, you finish, then it’s gone. There’s no turning back.”

Salazar’s second commission for TAG Heuer expresses a contrasting vision of the Monaco. She chose to emboss this image, exploring the design’s detailed craftsmanship more closely with the sharpness, precision, neatness, and fine contrast offered by the medium. In this image, the Monaco takes centre stage, observed with subtle attention to detail amidst a still life of objects that Salazar found to have a certain harmony with the watch’s design.  When we asked what drew her to this particular watch, she told us, “the Monaco is like an Art Object, really. It’s well-balanced, iconic, versatile – a classic.  And it’s contemporary, while still being timeless.”

The process of embossing begins with the building of something called a ‘master’; this is the three dimensional base which will be imprinted into damp paper with the help of a press, to create an impression.  Salazar crafted the master for this print using finely-cut pieces of cardboard, paper, wood, textile, and thread, layered to create a unified image.  But before any cut was made, she planned with great care; in fact, designing and engineering the master took about three weeks, before any printing could be performed. Like reverse woodcut, this piece was also planned backwards, as the three layers of volume created would appear inverted in the final result.

In contrast to the broader, more vibrantly colourful style of her woodcut, Salazar’s embossed print is expressed entirely in volume, light, and shade – all delicately illuminating fine details of the Monaco’s design. She shared with us that the minimalism of the medium appealed, as it draws attention to the central figure in the image – the watch itself.  The challenge was to express the artistry of the Monaco in as much detail as possible – not merely in its lines and indexes, but its shape in three dimensions. 

So what was it like making these two exquisite works? “Challenging! But very enjoyable.  Nothing happened that wasn’t thought through carefully, planned carefully.  Everything was tested in trials and examples, to see what worked. I wanted to look at the watch in two different ways – one, with a figure at the centre, in which the watch becomes part of a character, with a particular mood and atmosphere. The watch is secondary. And in the other, I wanted the watch to come first, to be the central figure, with a detailed investigation of the design.” The result? Two wonderfully imaginative visions of the TAG Heuer Monaco. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!