Artist Pablo Gimenez Zapiola works at night, in desolate areas where most people wouldn’t go in the dark.

But if you showed up in the right place at the right time, you might catch one of his messages — sometimes cryptic, often poetic — on a passing freight train.

In this respect, he has something in common with graffiti and wheatpaste artists who treat cities as their canvases. But for Gimenez Zapiola, the trains are part projection screen, part photography and video studio, part publishing platform.

One of Pablo Gimenez Zapiola's Meaning in Motion projections uses Cecilia Galli Guevara's poem Blood is not water for text.

These days, they’re also a new-career launching pad for Gimenez Zapiola, a graphic designer with an architecture background whose explorations have increasingly drawn attention.

Starting Friday, Spacetaker Artist Resource Center Gallery, a multidisciplinary space at Winter Street Studios, presents a selection of his videos and long-exposure photographs of his projections in Pablo Gimenez Zapiola: Meaning in Motion. During Friday's reception and four other performances, Gimenez Zapiola will treat guests to live projections, assuming the trains show up.

As Gimenez Zapiola knows from experience, they don’t run on a schedule. But a recent visit to the gallery didn’t prove much of a waiting game as Gimenez Zapiola and Carlos Pozo, who’s composing soundscapes for the exhibit, prepared for the opening.

Train after train rolled by as Gimenez Zapiola flashed the lines of Blood is not water, a poem by Argentine writer Cecilia Galli Guevara. The words — along with a ghostlike image of trees — flickered across the individual cars — and between them.

Originally from Argentina, Gimenez Zapiola first became interested in projecting text during the 1990s after learning about British and Dutch designers who were incorporating it into their work. He began projecting words from the dictionary onto walls and photographing the results, eventually presenting two exhibits in Argentina.

After moving to Houston in 2002, he was attracted to freight trains’ potential and, in 2004, set up experiments near rail lines in the West End. He saw enough beauty in his early projections to know he was onto something, but the area proved an uncomfortable place to work.

Pablo Gimenez Zapiola's photo shows a passage from Natalia Litvinova's poem The eyes projected onto a moving train.

In 2009, he got laid off — “the best thing that ever happened to me” — and asked the owner of a Willowbend-area warehouse near a rail line if he could set up his cameras and projectors to resume the project.

(Another quality that distinguishes Gimenez Zapiola from most graffiti artists: He gets permission. He has to, because he needs a place to plug in his equipment.)

His experiments have also led him to invert his viewpoint, at times projecting words and images from moving cars. Sometimes he pairs individual words, such as “truth” and “meaning,” that for him trigger interesting associations. In other cases, he projects poems, often translated into multiple languages.

The recipient of a city-funded Houston Arts Alliance individual artist grant, Gimenez Zapiola hopes his increased exposure leads to more opportunities, such as the chance to project onto scheduled trains during live performances. London, with its extensive subway system, would be a dream destination, he says.

Maybe someday the British will get their turn. But tonight, Houstonians get the first shot at seeing Gimenez Zapiola in action.

As long as the trains do their part.

PABLO GIMENEZ ZAPIOLA: MEANING IN MOTION
Reception 7-10 p.m. Friday, exhibit by appointment through Aug. 13
Live projections: 8:30-10:30 p.m. Friday, July 21, July 27, Aug. 6 and Aug. 12
Open studio: 2-5 p.m. Aug. 13
Spacetaker Artist Resource Center Gallery
2101 Winter B11
713-868-1839
Free