In forced meetings, pleasant meetings I (2023), a small piece of soap unfolds a narrative of body care and daily routines, alluding to foam and the pre-foam state: it offers...
In forced meetings, pleasant meetings I (2023), a small piece of soap unfolds a narrative of body care and daily routines, alluding to foam and the pre-foam state: it offers regarding cleanliness, protection, security and fragility. Conceptually, these readings are conveyed through the writings of Peter Sloterdijk, compiled in his trilogy, Spheres. According to his text, humans are geniuses of proximity, and foam is nothing more than a group of clustered spheres that symbolize the network of relationships established between bodies and objects. “Being-there already carries the sphere of possible neighboring” (Sloterdijk: 2004, p.16). Just as Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology theorizes the material relationships among things, Sloterdijk uses the metaphor of foam to speak about the republic of spaces. Ramón’s sculpture speaks of the individual as part of a network of connections expressed through foam, which also signifies structures or systems, including bodies, and also the spaces and objects. There is a malleable and porous entirety that relates and affects.
Thanks to gravity, a verticality in the body turns us into perpendicular lines to the ground. This condition is fundamental in Mar Ramón Soriano’s sculptures, influencing the placement and support of modules in space. At times, the modules are stacked as towers, exerting greater pressure on ones below. In other cases, an upper volume supports the others, generating physical tension. This tension leads her to work with specific materials, selected for their physical and poetic qualities: ropes serve the function of supporting, uniting and connecting. In her work, Mar Ramón Soriano’s ceramics symbolize the body – fragile and precariously supported. They represent emptiness, form and volume. The dialogue between soft and hard, familiar and strange, shapes a whole that seeks to make accomplices of our own bodies. “Through the dimensions of ceramics, I conquer space. I construct modules that stack on top of each other, like imposing skyscrapers or obelisks, aiming to achieve height or monumentality through the collectivization of more modest modules. These volumes enclose the seed of the body, which carries and is carried, serving as support or being supported by others."