Sculpture – studio Antimundo

Stelae

r3n0 — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 17:00:00 +0000

1’111,111

r3n0 — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 15:28:00 +0000

Sneaker shoe aged to a million years.

In this way we can witness at once the whole timeline in which an industrially manufactured mundane object is radically reshaped by Earth’s deep time into a geological remnant.
The initial trigger for this work came from the artist being introduced to actual “time machines” (weather and UV light accelerators) at the Technical University of Delft. These machines are often used to test materials used in industries such as aeronautics in order to simulate the passing of time by exposing the tested materials to unusually high amounts of UV light and other weather-related conditions.

Because aging-acceleration of an object, to turn it one million years old, by means of these specific machines would have demanded their constant use for thousands of years, finally Santillán turned to a different scientific method in order to achieve this goal. With the support of a team of chemists from the Amsterdam-based startup Spark904, by taking inspiration from the weather accelerators, an array of chemical mixes were developed in order to faithfully expose the shoes to their respective time-traveling age, in accordance to the estimated degradation of the different materials composing each shoe.

Forecast

r3n0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 15:28:00 +0000

Plant containers called “Wardian cases” were commonly used by 19th-century botanists to transport “exotic” plants from European colonies to the continent.

The garden can be considered a “colonial garden” because it contains several plants that were extracted from European colonies and introduced to the continent by explorers and botanists. The screens, which play a collection of apocalyptic films, serve an important role in keeping the garden alive with their eerie light.

The device is sealed from the viewer’s eyes, except for a small lens on top that allows people to look inside this ecosystem, which is illuminated by the TV screens facing inward.

A Thousand Years of Non Lineal Histoy

r3n0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 15:28:00 +0000

Chimú weaving (nowadays Peru).
Aprox. 1,000 years old.

‘A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History’ embodies a historical sedimentation of hypothetical kinships, it embodies the coming together of unrelated material cultures, it is an unknown version of the world in which colonialism has been replaced by non-linear narratives.

Spacecrafts (Venus)

r3n0 — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 15:28:54 +0000

This extraterrestrial soil has been used as clay, and consequently shaped, turned, and burnt transforming it into ceramic pieces.
As much as ceramics was a fundamental technology to sapiens’ civilizations it remains deeply relevant to our present, nowadays it is even used as a component of space shuttles.

Probably the process behind ‘Spacecrafts’ will be useful to space missions in the future since it provides clear understanding regarding the production of ceramics out of the harsh soil of planets such as Venus or Mars.

Chewing Gum Codex

r3n0 — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 15:28:00 +0000

Astronaut Neil Armstrong holding a (Shuar) spear in the Amazon rainforest. 1976.

{PROCESS DOCUMENTATION}
In 1976 astronaut Neil Armstrong joined a scientific expedition to the Amazon; the main goal was to explore a large cave called “Tayos” in the Ecuadorian side of the rainforest. Seven years prior he had become the first human to step on the moon. Along with many scientists, Ecuadorian soldiers in charge of the logistics, and a few members of the Shuar community (natives to that area of the rainforest), Armstrong ventured into this cave which encompasses hundreds of kilometers.

One of the Ecuadorian soldiers, Francisco Guamán, was closely following the steps of Armstrong. His only interest was to collect anything that would be discarded by the astronaut, “whatever I could get –he said– would become a valuable memorabilia” taken from one of the most famous people on Earth. It is not clear what type of items he expected, the truth is that a mundane piece of gum, which had been chewed by the astronaut, was all that he managed to gather.

After hearing rumours about this story, in 2018 the artist tracked down the family of Mr. Guamán –who had already passed away– to ask about it. The soldier’s granddaughter confirmed the story and proceeded to retrieve the little old gum from a box. She entrusted the artist with it.

For ‘Chewing Gum Codex’ human DNA, enclosed in the gum chewed by the astronaut, has been extracted and synthesized. This genetic material has been consequently inserted in the genome of plants, which are part of the installation.

Considering that plants deal better with zero-gravity conditions, which are extremely harsh for humans, ‘Chewing Gum Codex’ suggests the possibility of an interspecies astronaut as a plausible way for long-term traveling through outer space. In other words, in the future Mr. Armstrong could return to outer space, this time traveling inside plants.

Planetarium

r3n0 — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 15:28:00 +0000

Surface of planet Venus as taken by a NASA probe.

Being the case that the center of the Milky Way can be better observed from the Southern Hemisphere, indigenous peoples of the Andes invented a notion of constellations that is not made by drawing imaginary lines between shinning stars, theirs rather are formed by the interstellar dust floating in the center of our galaxy, which casts shadow forms.

Ancient ‘dark constellations’ conceived in the Andes mountains of South America.

This material astronomical conception is at the foundation of these series of works.

The resulting vessel is then displayed on an astronomical mount, which is programmed to endlessly follow planet Venus. In this way, this extraterrestrial material is constantly aligning to its original source in outer space.

Baneque

r3n0 — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:28:54 +0000

Upon landing, the Taíno natives told Columbus of an island called ‘Baneque’, which had all the richness he was searching for. Based on their indications, the sailor de – voted the following two months search – ing for an island that does not exist.

First map drawn by Columbus soon after his arrival on the coast of what he called ‘La Española’ island in 1492. Nowadays the island hosts two countries; the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Could it be possible to find the place never found by the so-called ‘discoverer’? In the area corresponding to the Atlantic Ocean there is a hole in the map drawn by the European sailor. This hole, which has the shape of an island, is the only missing part of the map.

For the artist, this tiny missing area of the map inevitably meant a hint of the missing island. If charted, the hole in Columbus map is located 4.2 miles into the ocean. Santillán traveled to the lo – cation where he gathered over 100 liters of sea water. In the following days this water was left to naturally evaporate from where crystals and minerals began appearing. At last the lost island has revealed itself.

Voyager

r3n0 — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:28:54 +0000

This action unites two wandering entities that were not otherwise intended to meet: a shirt on planet Earth, and meteorites from outer space, which now belong together.