The work Skin to Skin arises from my research and experimentation with the condition of a fossil, specifically with the processes of decontextualization of fossil trees that appear at a different time and in places where they do not belong, as if it were a trip.

Within the experiments with materials that I carry out, I am delving into the mineralization process of plant bodies that takes place in the subsoil: the tree covered with layers of sediments and without oxygen is penetrated (infiltrated via its pores) by water with mineral salts while its matter decomposes. Finally, a stone mold remains. In this decomposition and transformation, the bark, the skin of the tree, act as a crust that preserve its original shape. In some cases, it has a shiny, multi-colored appearance due to the presence of iron, manganese, and other minerals.

The trees themselves are an archive that allow an analysis of the atmospheric composition, climatic and vegetation studies, as well as detecting the existence of fires due to the fire scars on their trunks, throughout the time in which they live. We could say that fossilized trees shield this memory. Through their records, alive or fossilized, we can travel back in time, reconstructing past ecosystems and climates, but also part of our history and that of the earth. Many of the tree fossils that we find are not in their place of origin and their trunks appear sectioned, almost always without their final section, due to the fluvial transport process they undergo post-mortem, becoming a trace of geographic and geological movements and changes.

This condition of being transformed in a hidden, underground and subsequently discovered journey, allows one to question the limits/edges between the inside and the outside, the natural and the unnatural, between the human and the non-human, and how the conscious perception of these transformations can be analogous to other internal processes. In this case we are talking about stone and mineral trees, which have memory, a memory also of pain. Trees with a skin that protects and identifies them, with wounds and scars. Trees that travel in space and time, trees that condense different times. Stones that are footprints, footprints that are molds, bright and multi-colored trees.

In the translation of these new stone trees there is a capacity to condense periods of time, memories and bodies. My body, like that of the trees, has a memory, scars and pain, and it too condenses periods of time.

In this project I am creating from my own body. I use my arms, my legs and my trunk, I cover them with clay as if they were layers of skin, seeking their protection, seeking to be and feel from the place where the fossil is generated, inhabiting the emptiness/hole/gap, the in-between as space.

I am interested in layers, such as those that allow fossilization, layers that hide, inside layers, outside layers, layers that protect, porous layers, layers of skin that mutate. I seek to feel like a fossil, covered in cold layers that reflect the shape of my body and the traces of a new memory. By placing myself in this situation, I can feel and touch the layers. I generate a personal and intimate relationship with them. The touch draws the shapes, and more frequently escapes the structures projected from human thought.

The development of this material work reconfigures the relationship between the surface and the underlying, with what is internal and what is external, what is hidden and what is shown, what is seen and what is felt, in the search for the development of a new relationship with the environment, as if it sought to reaffirm a series of presuppositions and perception of the world, a kind of alternative cosmogony.

 

 Exhibition Skin to Skin (Mexico City)

31 March – 15 May 2022

Gallery Proyecto H Contemporáneo

Guadalajara 88, Roma Nte., Cuauhtémoc, 06700 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico

 

 

About Poyecto H Contemporaneo

Proyecto H is an international contemporary art gallery with offices in Mexico City (since 2013) and Madrid (since 2016). The gallery’s objective is the dissemination, exhibition, and internationalization of emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary artists; thereby seeking to create a bridge between both latitudes. The gallery annually schedules a minimum of 8 exhibitions that are divided between both venues collaborating with independent curators. A priority of the gallery is the participation in International Fairs of Contemporary Art, in order to establish relationships between artists, museums, institutions, and collectors. In addition, it is a commitment for Proyecto H to encourage and disseminate the work of Spanish artists in America, and American artists, mainly Mexican, abroad.