Galería Lapislázuli, patios de Garaje Vistahermosa
Materials
porcelain, pasta refractaria, local clay recolectada, natural stones, esmalte, metal and water
Techniques
wheel throwing, glaze formulation, high-temperature firing, assembly e water installation
Dimensions
Variables
01 — Context and process
The Shape of Still Water begins with the relationship between garden, fountain and ceramics as devices for containing and giving form to unstable matter. Vessels made from local clays and stones gathered in the territory form a series of water installations across the gallery courtyards.
The proposal emerges from a contradiction: what we perceive as still is traversed by continuous processes of transformation. Water never remains still; it sediments, evaporates, erodes and circulates even when it appears motionless. Against the pacified image of the ornamental garden, the exhibition reveals slow, nearly imperceptible rhythms shared by water and ceramic practice.
The ruins and pieces enter into a symbiotic dialogue with the courtyard trees: they contain, border or point to them while building an aesthetic relationship with them. Clay, stone, porcelain, metal and glaze retain the marks of fire and territory, while water reactivates the works and keeps them open to time.
The Shape of Still Water · Lapislázuli, Madrid / Nora River, Asturias
The fall of a tree reorganises its surroundings. It changes the light, points of support and contact with the ground; it opens paths and offers shelter and food. What happens to the tree extends to other bodies, whether it remains alive or begins to decompose.
In one of Lapislázuli’s courtyards, a fallen cypress is still alive. The works in The Shape of Still Water coexist with it and with the trees still standing around it. I am struck by how everything became integrated. I read some of these relationships during installation and made them visible through the placement of the works; others appeared later, as if responding to questions left open in the studio.
When working in a situated way, this form of attention becomes circular: I gather materials, work with them and return them to the territory as artworks, where they form connections and open other dialogues.
Some of the works emerge from my interest in the Etruscan underworld and in what happens underground, where the remains of what has died coexist with the roots of what continues to grow. This coexistence runs through The Shape of Still Water, together with an attention to what seems motionless yet continues to transform. The water circulating through the ceramics takes part in these processes. Encountering the cypress allowed me to recognise in the surroundings something I had been exploring through this imaginary: falling, permanence and life do not always follow the order we assign them.
Recently, beside the Nora River in Asturias, I spent a long time watching two donkeys eat a fallen branch. It had fallen in the early hours after the eclipse on 12 August.
The scene made me think again about the cypress. A fall changes much more than the position of a tree: what was once high up becomes available to other bodies. Something of the reorganisation I observe between the works and the trees appeared there too, in the donkeys eating from the branch.
Before its fall, a tree is a living being that catalyses and regulates conversations within and around its body. Death ends the active management of those connections. Root cells no longer send signals to bacterial DNA, leaves end their chemical chatter with insects, and fungi receive no more messages from their host. But the tree never fully controlled these connections; in life it was only one part of its network. Death decentralises the tree’s life, but does not end it.