Statement
My work departs from formal experiments with materials and objects which are not commonly coupled. For instance, in Igloo I work with the whiteness shared by sugar cubes and the ice of an igloo, producing different synaesthetic effects. The materials I use—mostly food and minerals—are related by both their organic origins and their energetic function: nutritive energy in the case of food, industrial energy in the case of coal. In addition, most of my works refer to objects whose design have transcended their function and consequently have become icons of contemporary material culture—for instance, the Alessi citrus squeezer by Phillip Starck.
Refining primary materials in order to construct objects from the world of contemporary design brings forward an ironic reinterpretation of both the constructive material and the represented object. When taking into account, for example, the precarious, dangerous, and exploitive conditions involved in coal extraction, this reinterpretation acquires a series of connotative layers. For instance, my coal Nike snicker signals to both coal extraction and the well-known exploitation of the workers who manufacture this product; the Hermes handkerchief displays a paradoxical relationship in the contrast between the high skilled labor needed for the handkerchief confection and the unskilled labor entailed in coal extraction.
Another salient feature of my work is the exposition of the physical effort involved in the construction of large-scale pieces such as Coal Igloo or the objects conforming The Invisible Hand. For their construction, I had to travel to mining zones to select the stones of best quality, incorporate the work of a coal artisan, and also to protect myself from the dangers entailed in working with this kind of material. Accordingly, I have registered through photography and video the working process. The Invisible Hand is paradigmatic in this sense because in it the expenditure of energy is not only displayed in the materials (coal, copper and iron) and in the process of manufacture (incorporated through video images), but also related to the objects themselves. This piece represents objects, such as a treadmill or a Chaise Longe, that entail forms of expenditure of energy, or the lack of it, in affluent sectors of society.
The course of my recent work has led me to incorporate into my investigation theoretical concepts, such as biopolitics, in order to think the relationship between labor, as a system of body control, and the social determinations of the production and exposition of objects in contemporary design. Another area in which I want to deepen my investigation is the socio-economic relations alluded when working with primary materials and systems of production traditionally related to the working class. These elements acquire a paradoxical status in my work because the material and the objects loose their commodity nature to become fetishes made by an artist, which signals to the difficulty of modifying present divisions of labor. By manipulating the formal relations between objects and different constructive materials the questions of my investigation appear more clearly. This work process enables me to touch upon complex themes and to develop new ideas in unforeseen ways.