Untiled. (A Pre-emption Quest), 2024 / 2025

Metal containers, beeswax, timers and heating system

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This installation stems from an exploration of Archizoom Associati’s No-Stop City (1970), a proposal for a modular, homogeneous city devoid of functional distinctions. The project continues a line of research begun with Superficie Neutra (2023), a sculptural and modular installation that explored the relationship between the organic and the industrial. During the production of Superficie Neutra, whilst working with beeswax (as the molten material solidified), a series of meandering patterns emerged on the concave surfaces of the sculptures. These forms appeared to correspond to Turing patterns. The mathematician and philosopher Alan Turing (who also laid the foundations of computer science and artificial intelligence) described how these patterns emerge autonomously through a process highly sensitive to chance, which is present in the formation of material structures at very different scales in nature. The same process that explains the patterns in the wax, the stripes of the zebra, the spots of the leopard and our own fingerprints.

My practice often brings to light the usually hidden infrastructure that underpins the urban environment. In this case, I have sought to turn my own sculptures inside out, revealing their underlying structures and the processes that shape them—everything that was previously invisible (and odourless). 

The installation consists of seven metal boxes filled with beeswax, which are intermittently heated and cooled by an electrical device, triggering the creation and transformation of patterns. Both the strict morphology of the seven metal containers and their rigid arrangement, based on a uniform grid, contrast with the organic and complex forms that the material generates as it transitions from a liquid to a solid state. This mechanism generates a slow yet constant process, requiring an attention span that matches the material’s own pace. Furthermore, the piece establishes relationships with both the space and the audience that go beyond visual perception, through the scent emitted by the melting wax and the heat generated by the trays when the electric heating elements are in operation.

Thus, this project captures a process that began as research into a utopian urban plan and evolved into a formal essay: a collection of unpredictable landscapes that carry the echoes of this failed city model.