28 december 2021, Flor Linckens
Lara Almarcegui: “Objects hardly interest me, what haunts me are the places and my active relationship with them.”
It's hard to dismiss the irony: Ellen de Bruijne Projects programmed an exhibition in which the Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui philosophises about the implications of shutting down an industrial gravel pit. Then that same exhibition is abruptly paused by a new lockdown. The gallery is scheduled to reopen on Saturday 15 January, and the curious viewer will be able to attend a lecture by Almarcegui on that day.
The Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui, who is based in Rotterdam, specialises in environmental and geological issues. In her practice, she investigates the material aspects of land and urban space through the eyes of a sculptor. In the exhibition at Ellen de Bruijne Projects, she shows two works with a focus on the extraction of natural resources.
Lara Almarcegui, Gravera, 2021, Ellen de Bruijne Projects
The 10-minute video work “Gravera" is a central piece in the exhibition, in which she offers a geological perspective on the Spanish area of Lleida, specifically the terrain around the River Segre. Almarcegui's work elaborates on the contrasting relationship between the noisy quarry and the vast mountain belt of the Pyrenees. It is a landscape that is as natural as it is industrial, as a result of human intervention. Almarcegui is fascinated by the geological past of the area, which was formed between 80 and 20 million years ago, when the Iberian Peninsula collided with the rest of Europe. Almarcegui: “We don't know anything about the land we walk on. Objects hardly interest me, what haunts me are the places and my active relationship with them.”
In the video, the artist asks herself a question: what would happen if La Plana del Corb, the industrial complex of Sorigué, stops working for a day? Yet the project is anything but a spontaneous action; it was preceded by a year of research, calculations and 3D modelling, in collaboration with geologists. The artist was granted permission and in February of this year, the quarry was captured in a frozen kind of silence. By ceasing all work, the dust clouds make way for contemplation and reflection. This way, Almarcegui gives new meaning to the processes and materials, which are usually characterised by their silent violence and their inherent relationship with transformation and constant movement. This transformation is also embedded in the gravel itself, which consists of fragmented rock that is used for the production of cement and concrete. Almarcegui challenges the public to reflect on the extreme extraction volume and the origin of the building materials. At the same time, these materials end up forming buildings that are often destroyed after only a few decades.
Lara Almarcegui, Rocks and materials of the Pyrenees mountains range, 2021, Ellen de Bruijne Projects
For her practice, the artist also explores land ownership as a political issue. For more than twenty years, Almarcegui has been building a series of geological archives, exploring contemporary transformation processes linked to social, political and economic change. In doing so, she draws attention to mineral rights and the ways in which these are legally established. The artist regularly acquires these rights herself, to prevent materials from being extracted in those places.
The exhibited works “Rocks and materials of the Pyrenees mountains range” and “Sand in the Netherlands” are about mass and materiality, and show the results of various calculations that the artist made. In the first work, she shows the materials that make up the Pyrenees mountain range, from a calculation that was done in collaboration with the IGME, the Spanish Institute of Geology and Mining. For the second work, she calculated how much sand there is in the Netherlands. How do these dry, quantitative numbers affect our perception of the landscape — and who ultimately owns that landscape?
Almarcegui's work was previously shown in the Graphische Sammlung in Zurich, during Art Basel, Museum M+ in Hong Kong, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, MACBA in Barcelona, the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Van Abbemuseum, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and during Manifesta 9. In 2013, Almarcegui showed an installation in the Spanish Pavilion during the 55th Venice Biennale, where she showed the raw, deconstructed materials that the building consists of, presented in a series of piles.
The exhibition 'Stopped Quarry' will be on show again in Ellen de Bruijne Projects on Saturday 15 January. On the same day, Almarcegui will also give a special lecture in the gallery. The exhibition will run until 5 February.
