Lucretius, Greek poet and philosopher, describes the world according to the principles of Epicurus. His philosophy is inspired by matter and explains objects and living things materially. According to him, everything takes shape through combinations of atoms though these combinations of atoms are fundamentally fortuitous. He suggests free will in a physicalist universe by postulating an indeterministic tendency for atoms to deviate (associate) randomly.
This theory, which is a truly intuitive approach to nature, comes very close to the way I approached crystal formations in sugar.
In this work I facilitate the material unions which would hardly be spontaneous, these are developed in a totally epicurean and experimental way. I dip mostly fabrics and threads that take shape with the crystallization of sugar but what happens is not controlled.
It takes thousands of years for natural minerals to be created. They are the result of very violent pressures and strong telluric forces. Sugar crystals are born in a quiet environment, in a time of abandonment. Sudden changes (temperature or movement) are counterproductive. They need a fairly high ambient temperature.
DE L’AMOUR
Cotton thread and sugar crystals
In his essay De l’Amour, 1822, Stendhal mentions the different stages of this feeling. I found fascinating and somewhat incredible his will to explain this phenomenon in an almost scientific way, as an unchangeable recipe.
One of the stages described is the «crystallization of love».
This piece highlights the contradiction that exists between Stendhal’s rigorous discourse and the random nature of the love experience. A dichotomy is also raised concerning the flexibility of the textile, basic material, as opposed to the rigidity of the crystals which arbitrarily invade the textile.
PLATONIC SOLIDS
Cotton thread and sugar crystals
“The fire is made up of tetrahedrons; air, octahedra; water, icosahedra; the earth of cubes; and as a fifth form is still possible, the pentagonal dodecahedron, God used it to serve as a limit to the world ”wrote Plato. Platonic solids are perfect: the same form repeats itself on each face of the polyhedra. There are only five possible forms.
These solids supposed a world tending to perfection. I suppose that is the origin of the adjective ¨platonic¨, which precisely suggests an ideal, inapplicable to reality.
In these pieces, I combine triangular, square, pentagonal and hexagonal faces creating imperfect polyhedra, a more «appropriate» and imperfect approach to the world we know. These are irregular and random compositions.
RIVER
Cotton thread and sugar crystals
Looking at the aerial views of the Valle del Cauca, where sugar plantations are located in Colombia, one can see how these straight polygonal shapes from terrains seem to adhere to the winding banks of the rivers. This is something very similar to what happens in the method that I developed where the crystals adhere to the textile threads that I use.
