Boca abierta, Boca abierta, Bocas (piernas), 2021

Remedios

Mònica Planes

C3A Exhibitions

Boca consists of a series of concrete and metal sculptures, all bearing different imprints of the artist’s body. They emerged from a performative process in which Mònica Planes experiments with the malleability of wet cement to impress her own body in motion onto the material. More akin to dance than to sculpture, this method is rehearsed individually or at times jointly with other performers. During the casting process, the cement responds to the choreography of movement sequences and reacts to the pressures of the body’s limbs, extruding organic forms that are both controlled and autopoietic. After drying and hardening, the resulting shapes look like armatures, giant shields, shells, or else like sinuous cavities, the interior of a mouth, a tongue, lips, and palate. Mounted on long steel rods and leaning against the tall walls of the patio, the sculptures shed their human likeness, yet evoke organic and physiological imaginaries.

The set of four sculptures was commissioned in 2022 by curatorial initiative Pipistrello for a site-specific installation at the Iberian quarry of Clots de Sant Julià (Vulpellac), in a forest in northern Catalonia. Four thousand years ago, stones were extracted from this quarry to build one of the first cities in the region. Responding to the site’s history, Mouths also explores the relationship between human presence and shaping power over a territory, architecture, and the natural environments, and eerie similarities between biotic and corporeal shapes.
Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992. Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.