Installation view, Almazen, Barcelona, 2002
gota a gota
KRTU Grants 2002, Almazen, Barcelona
Diario de Mallorca - ART REPORT 2003, Casal Sollerich, Palma de Mallorca
Gota a gota (in English: drop by drop), represents a history of a world that is fictional, yet inevitably anchored in its own fragile, material reality. It is a story that, as it unfolds, carries with it the seeds of its own consumption and decay.
The origins of the project are rooted in the ancient Mediterranean coastal defense networks; isolated outposts from which to observe, protect and provide sanctuary. They are by design inhospitable, impregnable structures that at the same time allow the possibility of an enveloping embrace, albeit austere and solitary…
A defensive watchtower, with a circular floorplan measuring 60 inches in diameter by 100 inches in height, is built entirely with bars of Pardo GSM 300grs soap. The bars are slightly moistened between layers and then dried giving the apparently fragile cylindrical form a surprising solidity. The tower is illuminated from within; a warm orange light seeps through the thick, translucent walls of soap.
Over the course of the exhibition, a narrow break or fissure slowly forms in the wall of the tower, beginning at the top and working its way down. This is caused by the constant, slow drip of water falling from an old brass faucet on the end of a naked pipe suspended over the tower. As time passes the bricks of soap start eroding, slowly collapsing into one another forming a mass of fluid, soft rubble at the base of the wall, eventually leaving a large break in the wall.
The only illumination in the room comes from within the work itself; the soft glow of the tower and a delicate luminescence radiating from a series of drawings etched on plexiglass panels bracketed to the walls of the exhibition space. The shimmering lines of the drawings depict an imaginary, lyrical parallel world seen through the eyes of a series of fictional, quasi-mythological characters, that seems to unfold as it is observed…