CO(NH2)2 _ 2019 - 2021 _ borosilicate glass remnants, fertilizer crystals, stainless steel _ 250 x 180 x 155 cm
A large mirrored tray stands at the height of our vision, containing a set of tubular pieces, broken or shattered, on a synthetic mantle of crystals that grow, drill and decay.
The type of glass corresponds to that used in the production of chemical laboratory components. The fact that all of them are failures from glass workshops invites us to question systems of production and the knowledge of craftsmanship but also to rethink the object’s life cycle.
The work has a double scale: one, as a condensed unity working as an artefact. The second one has to do with the effect that produces the flat surface at the level of our eyes. It allows the observer to walk into the interspaces that the glass pieces create in between. It resonates to an afterparty table, with broken glasses and coke but also to a dystopic futuristic cityscape. A cityscape represented by a denouement where architecture has led to an eerie mass of strange, competing objects expressed through infinite crystal towers, symbols of a culture responsible for climate change, soil degradation, fertilizers and toxic substances.
The idea of uncomfortable fragility of the sharp edges of glass, together with the reactive material forming synthetic crystals alludes to the artificial and the chemical. The urea crystals are the result of a discovery by Friedrich Wöhler in 1828. By mixing ammonia with a substance called cyanogen, made from cyanide, he could produce oxalic acid (urea) and thus demonstrated that an inorganic substance could be converted into an organic substance through chemical processes.
This discovery became a refutation of vitalism, the hypothesis that what maintains the activity of living beings is a special "vital force." For the first time, science demonstrated that the laws of physics or chemistry could explain vital processes and functions.
Wöhler's demonstration of urea synthesis has become regarded as a refutation of vitalism, the hypothesis that living things are alive because of some special "vital force". It was the beginning of the end for one popular vitalist hypothesis, the idea that "organic" compounds could be made only by living things.
Axonometrics _ 2018 _ drawing on graphite paper _ 88 x 127 cm
Axonometrics _ 2018 _ graphite on tracing paper _ 594 mm x 20 m
