Cuerpo Gris
Martillo Neumático
14. luglio 2022
Photo: Antonio Bouzas
Cuerpo Gris: an ephemeral intervention for the Sacred Art Museum in Bilbao. The Gau Zuria (White Night) festival took place on the 17th and 18th of June 2022, for the 722nd jubilee of Bilbao City Foundation. On the occasion, 28 artistic interventions transformed the Basque capital’s urban landscape.
Photo: Antonio Bouzas
Cuerpo Gris (Grey Body), is a site-specific intervention spreading over the cloister of the former Convento de la Encarnación. In a few minutes, an imposing organic volume was displayed, colonizing the central garden of the 16th-century building. The installation’s continuous, slinky and soft body disrupts the archery’s repetitive language and the carved stones’ rigid tectonic.
Photo: Antonio Bouzas
This new volume affects the cloister in a radical manner. Cuerpo Gris unfolds in space, winding between the elements of the garden around the lily fountain which remains as a central symbolic element. The inflated structure follows the main axes of the courtyard and its soft body is composed of three tangent pieces of variable diameters, which sum more than 120 meters of lineal length and reach a height up to 6 meters. Thanks to a detailed study of the site and a handcrafted production of the patronage, Cuerpo Gris adapts to the cloister’s topography. Rooted in the ground, it ties the boxwood bushes and absorbs the centenary olive tree in its twists.
Photo: Antonio Bouzas
The experience of the atmosphere is materialized in a series of cavities proposing a fragmented vision of the space. The installation plays with the visitor: Cuerpo Gris alternatively immobilizes you, rolls you up softly in intimate spaces, expels you or invites you to straddle it. A monstrous corps that traps you in its interior and oppresses your gaze. The monumental appearance confronts the human body with a strange presence which is never revealed completely.
Photo: Antonio Bouzas
Martillo Neumático is a young collective interested in ephemeral site-specific interventions with a monumental quality. Their works show up spontaneously, willing to alter the usual dynamics of urban space. In 2019 they carried out Eclipse, the winning project of Insolit Festival in Palma de Mallorca. Among other works, in 2020 they presented Desplome (Collapse), a counter-monument located in the ruins of the former Iglesia dels Dolors, for the festival A Cel Obert of Tortosa.