Artist: Lolo & Sosaku
Exhibition title: De la tierra
Curated by: Maike Moncayo and Lolo & Sosaku
Venue: La Veloz, Barcelona, Spain
Date: October 22, 2022 – June 18, 2023
Photography: ©Aleix Plademunt. Courtesy of the artists
“De la tierra” (“Of the earth”) is an artistic project by Lolo & Sosaku, that imagines a potential space-time, a place where machines and the earth have forged a new alliance that puts an end to human supremacy. Installed at La Veloz, an abandoned factory in L’Hospitalet designed by the architect Jordi Figueras Anmella in 1967. Composed of rhomboid-shaped machines and furrows which spring from this inhospitable terrain, “De la Tierra” portrays an ecology that is characterized by a new language and interdependence between materialities. A language that is perceived in the rise and fall of the metallic rhombuses and their collision with the earth, in the reiteration that accentuates the object condition of these structures and that seems to point to an indecipherable code for the human. And it is this dialogue between the sculptural objects with their environment and with the viewer which is the link that unites the works of Lolo & Sosaku. Machine objects looking for friction, touch, and tension. In “De la Tierra” the machinic subjectivity is based on a hidden excess, which is far removed from any anthropomorphism. In this way, the project shows a reality in which machines are no longer at the service of human beings but instead coexist with us in full autonomy.
-Maike Moncayo
If one looks, the vast plain of gray concrete opens up. There is water spilling through space, outlining grooves like the ones you have in the palm of your hand. A drop falls, repeatedly, coupled with the click of the machine closing. It seems to rise, as you rise, with unusual slowness. You might believe that the machines that inhabit this place have been put in place by man long ago, but what happens here seems more like a miracle. You go through the space wanting to touch the metallic rhombuses, which are refracted in a geometric choreography that shines. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t touch them, they radiate in such a way that something holds you back. You sense that their movements whisper words that you will never be able to understand because they come from a place where time has fallen apart. Your breathing slows down. The metallic reflection on the water pulls you down. The machines seem to float on the silver surface of the water, but your feeling is that they really come from deep under the surface. Not from the center of the earth, but from an orbiting hole in another space-time fold. A ray of light bounces off the top of the machine, reflecting off the water and passing through your iris like a thread that pushes you. Although the place is abandoned, you feel the presence of something supernatural. You imagine that if your body crossed that rhombus, like when you dive into the water, you would disappear without a trace. Without a doubt, the machine is a sacred topography, a rhomboid map to reach another dimension. You are stunned. Where have you been all this time?
-Marta Echaves
