Woven Water / Submarine Landscape Agua Tejida / Paisaje Submarino 1994

WOVEN WATER: SUBMARINE LANDSCAPE AT MFAH HOUSTON

2015 Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America. The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH). TX, U.S.A. Curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez.

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.

Text by Michael Wellen curator at MFAH.

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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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