Studio Orta

The cloud is an intermediary between two worlds. Its airy lightness and gas give free rein to the architectural imagination, whilst its liquid composition returns it to earth. The cloud, by virtue of its ubiquity, is an intercessor between reality and imagination, between heaven and earth, light and gravity. The absence of a stable form, which characterizes the cloud, is a powerful concept that embodies, with its dreams, the designs for an ideal society. Playing on its metamorphoses, it can convey, in the mode of fable, a more political message without gravity. Here, the message focuses on water, from which clouds are constituted, by asking how humans will share this resource on earth.

On galerieofmarseille’s stand at FIAC, Lucy + Jorge Orta will present Cloud Raft, one of the sculptures exhibited at La Maréchalerie – centre d’art de Versailles in 2011. Here the clouds proposed by Lucy + Jorge Orta take on greater material significance. They evoque the perturbations of the water cycle, its pollution, commodification and scarcity. Constituted from recycled plastic bottles, Cloud Raft refers in particular to the new plastic waste continents adrift on the world's oceans, a striking image of a doomed world. The reflection on the water is an undercurrent throughout several recent works of this binomial series, gathered under the title OrtaWater: machinery to distribute or recycle water, and vessels to ensure survival of the living after the environmental disasters that lie ahead. In this perspective, the cloud can be seen as a thermodynamic megamachine: it makes rain, recycles water and distributes it on our planet.

The artists will also be participating in FIAC Hors les Murs 2012 with the installation/action International Passport Distribution Bureau, presented on this occasion at the main entrance of the Jardin des Plantes.

http://www.fiac.com/galerie.html?ex=461#.UFMEI2i6T8s
http://www.fiac.com/hors-les-murs-jardin-plantes.html#.UFMD52i6T8s