The solo exhibition Joined an Avalanche, never to be alone again by Carlos Irijalba (Pamplona, 1979) will consist of new and existing installations, sculptures and photography, spread over the three floors of A Tale of A Tub. Recently he has been mainly working with raw matter that is already present in the world and the landscape or manufactured industrial processes that are trying to improve their inherent qualities. On view in the former bathhouse are aluminum columns with deviations, failed bone-like objects made of metal foam, raw leather cowhides and intricately braided exhaust pipes, symbolically marking the entanglement between nature, culture and politics.
Seeing the world through the eyes of a natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, reveals that the social and the natural, the nature and the culture, the real and the constructed, are not dualisms that we can responsibly embrace. According to philosopher Nancy Tuana in Viscous Porosity: Witnessing...Katrina from 2008, a “natural disaster” such as that which happened in Louisiana can only be properly understood and prevented if we consider the way in which the social, political and natural aspects of the situation have historically been taken into account. Tuana proposes the term ‘Viscous Porosity’ (viscosity is density and porosity refers to the small openings (pores) in a material) to reflect on the boundaries between the human body and its environment. The long-term release of toxins into the air and water after the disaster literally penetrates the pores of the skin.
Like Tuana, Irijalba believes that there is no distinction between man and nature and uses different material manifestations in geology or industry in his work. Strange Strangers examines the biomimetic patterns visible in industrial processes, copying structures in our evolutionary track. We label these qualities as inert, but in fact they belong to our own nature, even if we are not aware of them. Our actions and productions speak the endotic, and this makes us responsible for the spaces these objects occupy, the functions they perform, the time they last and the trace they leave behind.
Irijalba focuses on natural and artificial processes in order to analyse parallel structures that concern social and evolutionary development. Accumulations, crystallizations and explosions do not only occur in visible matter, but also in genetics, language and social dynamics. For example, a process of sedimentation of mineral crystallization is similar to how language permeates a society. Or a volcanic rock structure, with its characteristic cavernous formations, suggests formal similarities with a revolution.
The installation Hiatus, that will be shown in combination with Shape of Thought, will consist of a series of aluminum pillars that have been rejected because they did not come out of the mould perfectly. The installation is considered a metaphor for a series of events, turbulences of failures in a timeline: the disturbance of a revolution in a social fabric, the hiccup in a breath or a crisis in an economic system. Aluminum is a material that can be recycled constantly, so the image of continuous melting and reusing from solid to liquid and solid again, corresponds to Irijalba’s idea of the conditions of matter as passing and relative.
Viscosity seals the gap between fluidity and solidity, which is also related to other similar dichotomies, between exteriority and interiority, material and spiritual, homogeneity and heterogeneity, and matter and form. The concept of viscosity and how it has affected the understanding of matter can also be applied to broader social and cultural issues. The scientific study of ice, a matter that in the past was considered solid/liquid, can be taken as an example to argue that life and community only remain possible when the matter in solid and liquid states can mix. The new video Coriolis Effect refers to this blending and effect, which explains the deflection of the trajectory of an object moving in a rotating system. The effect is created by the rotation of earth around its axis and this is especially evident in the circular motion of cloud masses or the water that spirals down into your sink.
Shape of Thought, that is shown in combination with Hiatus, represents the impossibility to freeze a relative and temporary condition that lays somewhere between the solid and liquid form. Irijalba researched the possibility to visualize mental activity and brain irrigation by using MRI-scan technologies. He wanted to visualize the chosen brain activities, that look like glass or watery substances, via 3D animations. Glass is a living resource that changes constantly. Crystal is in fact an extremely viscous liquid; establishing transactions, both materially and immaterially, that give rise to the image and the experience of it. This project applies an approach of crystallization in the body that is not there, from the purely material and almost abstract to the immaterial streams (of thought) that become reality, or at least our experience of it.
For his project Muscle memory Irijalba did research to metal foam. The material has the same structure as human bones and is invented for the use in human prostheses. At first, the medical sector tried to use this new material to improve the quality of human life. But before that could happen the car and aerospace industry adapted it for their own use. This is a good example of how these industries, that assimilate material that is originally created from humanist ideals, use it for their own profit.
The installation Wet Blue gets its name from a leather tanning process, in which a special chrome is used to whiten leather in which a blue metallic tint will still be visible. They call this process ‘wet blue’ and for Irijalba it indicates the distance from nature embedded in the industrial process itself.
He was especially fascinated by the workmanship of the large full cowhides, which are carefully selected, cut and marked to extract as much usable leather as possible. The contours of the leather are a powerful symbol for Irijalba, because they have so many connotations around industrialization, capitalism, animal rights and environmental issues.
“As a stone I could roll down a hill joined by an avalanche, never to be alone again.” (A Rock Turns into a Frog, Carlos Irijalba 2021 p.5) The title of the exhibition comes from a text by Stefanie Hessler from Irijalba’s latest publication. An avalanche is usually a large mass of snow coming down a slope, but can also refer to a crowd of people in a football stadium or shopping center. Just as with hurricanes, various complex natural and social factors play a role in the formation of snow avalanches. The title refers in that sense to the fragility of the system we inhabit. Flowing is not a unique quality of fluid according to Irijalba, and not just fluid flowing. Matter and biomass are subject to a combination of flows and critical intensity points. They manifest themselves as such in relation to our space/time perspective. The dynamics of seeing and correlating the living and the inert, the anthropic and the natural, the soil and the social are in fact deeply woven into the landscape and ultimately into ourselves.
Entrada actualizada el el 29 nov de 2021
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