SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE AT CAPP STREET PROJECT

SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE: WOVEN WATER
Blue starfish, metal.

Composed of thousands of blue starfish, these constructions look like fragments of. "woven water". Sometimes they resemble the undulating surface of the ocean, or like sculptural, three-dimensional "chunks" of water. I joined the tips of each starfish to he next one with fine wire, and made their form and configuration the result of an organic process of addition.

Floating in space, these starfish constructions surround the viewer to recreate an underwater experience. The smell of the ocean emanates from them, filling the room. The natural color of this animal, beautiful shades of blue and grey, remind us of the color of the water, from whence they come. The symmetrical star shape-- its symbolism and formal beauty often evoke memories of literary worlds of fantasy and mystery.

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The most baroque of its installations, "Woven water, underwater landscape" (1994-2003) builds an ambience total; it's a staging-both of the idealization and of the nature commercialization. As a controlled space, it evokes also the dioramas of the museums of natural history and subjective character, almost arbitrary, of its mechanisms pedagogical, which serve as an artifice to transmit scientific knowledge.

Carolina Ponce de León,
"Inventario de curiosidades "(2004).

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PROPOSAL FOR CAPP STREET PROJECTS

I propose an installation composed of sculptural elements made from different kinds of marine life, such as shells, sea snails, sea horses, urchins, starfish. Distributed in the space, they will resemble a submarine landscape, inhabited by strange and colorful life forms, in a fantastic, mysterious underwater atmosphere.

Somewhere on the surface of the earth, when entering a room, the viewer will find himself immersed in a submarine world where the water is missing but diverse forms of marine life abound.

Some feet above the head, the undulating surface of the water is formed by fragments of a
beautiful weaving made out of blue and green starfish. An intense smell of sea emanates from them, evoking memories of algae and decaying ports.

Within this atmosphere of beauty and mystery from another world, elements of diverse colors and elegant forms float in the space. Mounds of unrecognizable textures are dispersed on the ground. Looking more closely, the viewer realizes that all of these elements have been carefully made with shiny and colorful conchs and shells, urchins and snails. Starfish formations will remind us of strange flowers from enchanted gardens from those we used to visit in fairy tales, when we were little.

THE MATERIALS

All sorts of marine life are sold as souvenirs in tourist shops in any seaside vacation spot (i.e. Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco). Many are also available at wholesale distributors here in the United States who import them to satisfy the tourist's demand.
Such souvenirs are evocative of the beach and the ocean. They are reminders of a place, they are indigenous to it. They have stopped being life to become cultural objects, objects of industry and commerce. These animals have become banal, commodified, decorative objects. Displaced from their natural habitats, from souvenir shops or from dusty shelves in domestic settings, to be presented in an installation as art and as fiction, it is unveiled the paradoxical and disturbing relationship between these marine animals and those whom enjoy their beauty.

I see a lot of potential for these materials to be developed, as sculptural objects,
as an installation, as a narrative, as a fiction, and ultimately, as an aesthetic experience.

English