“The space is beautiful and only the fact that you have the sea behind, it brings a dimension to incredible work,” admitted the Catalan artist … Samuel Salcedo (Barcelona, 1975) After installing its monumental piece, ‘Needles and Pins’, in the Nautical gardens. There you can see until July 1, turning your back to the sea, thanks to the collaboration of the Municipal Foundation of Culture.
It is a head of more than a meter high in cast iron, a material that will oxidize during the time that is installed in front of the sea. «One of the things I like the most, one of the ideas that I work in this piece is memory, the passage of time as a metaphor. This iron sculpture is going to oxidize with the Gijón Sea, so it will be recorded in the sculpture forever, ”he explained. «I get the work as an artist very easy when the site completes the work».
Although it was not intended to dialogue with this specific space, the result of the installation finishes the meaning of the work. «It is a unique piece, but sometimes I work with four or five different faces that go together and that are designed to go abroad. I love the idea of discovering my work in places that you don’t expect, ”he shared.
-Grateful for the opportunity to present this piece to the Gijon public, he confessed that “it is more beautiful when someone offers you a location, you bring the work and take new meanings.” Despite its dimensions, “the scale is very human,” because the viewer “is larger than sculpture, but at the same time the dimension of the head is huge.” In addition, its ability to change over time, subject to the variations of the environment, makes its ephemeral nature accentuate, its identification with the viewer.
‘Needles and Pins’ is one of the works that are part of the exhibition ‘sculptures’ that from today can be visited in the Aurora Vigil-Escalera gallery. In this series of pieces, mostly faces, iron, cement and polychrome resin predominate. «Each material gives meaning to what I do. Many times I use the same mold in different materials and every time the material changes, the meaning changes, ”he explained. Materials that oxidize or synthetic materials, all with a different plasticity, make the artist “clarify the idea I am working with: the faces that question, nonverbal communication, the idea that you can reflect in a sculpture as in a mirror and put a part of you in it,” the author described.
Although the verdict will be given by the pedestrians, while they installed the piece “the answer has been great.” And like any artist, “what I hope is that people like it, that I can read something I try to explain.”
