PALMA de MALLORCA, Spain — Reflecting the maritime identity of Palma, Posidònia is an immersive installation culminating Patricia Mato-Mora’s artist residency at the Pilar and Joan Miró Museum and Foundation (March 16 – June 11, 2017). Made entirely from ceramic components, Mato-Mora transforms the gallery’s interior into a port atmosphere as ceramic chains inhabit the space.
The ceramic chainlink elements have been made out of red stoneware clay (stained with oxides); fired in a gas kiln, with a “reduction” firing (without oxygen), to 1280ºC (cone 9). Thanks to this material treatment, the ceramic material recalls the rust that the sea causes on any adjoining materials, particularly metals.
Trained as an architect, and with a background in architectural journalism, Mato-Mora is interested in the capacity of spaces to act as arena’s for storytelling and imagination. In Posidònia, Mato-Mora interpreted the space a subaquatic dock. Visitors find themselves submerged in the ceramic choreography, walking on the seabed, where the anchors that secure the boats are resting.
Visitors are invited to tie small nylon string from the ceramic sculptures creating a manmade horizon reminiscent of the break where barnacles stop growing on the chains that moor boats to the harbor. The growth of this hyper-sculpture is completely independent of the artist as the ceramic chains serve as armature for “submarine” growth.
Through this element of visitor interaction, Mato-Mora aims to understand how each visitor reacts to the piece, not so different from how an aquatic creature might react to the chains with which boats are moored.
Mato-Mora works within the illusory division between man and nature. There are merely manmade works as a natural result of the human condition, in the same way spiders create webs and bees make hives. With Posidònia, Mato-Mora aims to manifest the very same “flow of the universe” that causes submarine invertebrates to inhabit manmade chains in harbors; questioning the very animality of the visitor.
In the installation, the material of ceramics is working entirely in tension, which is a very unique application of this material, commonly found structurally in compression. This has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of Rasti Bartek at Cundall Engineering, and Dr. Luc Vandeperre at Imperial College London.
The residency and exhibition have been possible thanks to the Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby’s Biennial Prize.
Read more Cfile musings of Mato-Mora.
Text (edited) from the gallery.
Do you love or loathe this work from the worlds of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Add your valued opinion to this post.