The Origin
“I give you the light of this journey to the center”
Installation at Centro Cultural Córdoba.
From 26 May to 31 July 2016.
Journey to the center of matter
Romina Castiñeira’s sitespecific work combines various materials. On the one hand, she explores the expressive possibilities of tangible matters which make the installation a physical entity: plastic film, salt and asphalt. On the other hand, she deliberately uses two subtle matters that complete the narrative of the installation: light and space. L ight dramatically interacts with dense materials –salt and asphalt–, making the expressive contrast between the white and black colors displayed on the floor even stronger. Space amplifies this experience: the scale renders itself overwhelming, bringing a sense of territory, a vast landscape to the picture.
The origin of the work of art goes beyond the simple placement of materials and what drives them to be in a specific place. What you can see here is in fact sediment of the most intense and basic part of the work, the procedural path that has left this trace as its result. The process has meant combining time and budget as actors and cocreators of the installation, which having posed obstacles during the evolution of work, have played a part as triggering factors of the artistic form. The original idea, which consisted of a complex structure mounted in space, was “polished” and Romina moved on in her creative journey to the essential center of the material condition of her art, after going through an extensive physicochemical research process. On her journey, she came across trades, industrial processes, market dynamics, environmental rules and social dimensions.
In the end, she generously gives us the light of her journey to the center, to the center of matter itself.
Text by Adrián Manavella
