#000000

Artist list

Rodrigo Acosta, Jordi Aparicio, Jorge Manilla, Valentim Quaresma, Carlos Silva

In spite of their clear individuality, these five male voices intersect in this project with one mutual condition. #000000, the hex value for black, refers to the complete absence of colour and is the common ground for the artists to explore the symbolic range of meanings attached to it. Hints on concealing and protecting, the secretive and the unknown, strength and authority, elegance or sophistication are unveiled throughout the exhibition.


Carlos Silva
This work begins with fragments and an inevitable urge to organize them, to group them back together. I'm attracted to the idea that fragments are traces of something that has been broken, that lost its integrity, but also raw material for building something new. The dialogue of the hands with the materials and the quest for making each fraction fit turns into something of a ritual. The shape of each new jewellery piece is driven by this process, towards the creation of a solid and (again) stable surface that carries the symbolic protection of this new configuration to the body.

Jordi Aparicio 
I currently work with two parallel methods using two different materials, applying fire to both of them in a sort of bipolar way. The methods are connected to each other like two sides of the same idea. In the first one, I wind precious metal around pieces of wood which are incinerated during the process and are replaced by an empty space with their shape, creating a memory. In the second one, I use wrapping plastic that becomes a waste material after being used to protect something. When it is stretched around that something, it's distorted permanently by the object it protects. It creates a memory. Through fire, I destroy that memory.

Jorge Manilla
By creating jewellery Jorge Manilla investigates his environment - religion, emotions, relationships and the meaning of life.
Over the last years, the artist has rediscovered his love for the black colour. To the artist, black relates to something hidden, the secretive and the unknown, and as a result, it creates an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world. His dark forms and shapes create a barrier between the meanings of the objects and the outside world. Black implies self-control and discipline, independence and a strong will. It gives an impression of authority and power. For Manilla black is the end, but the end always implies a new beginning. When the light appears, black becomes white, the color of new beginnings.

Rodrigo Acosta
La necesidad de la oscuridad
The idea of the shirt as the first layer that covers the body, that hides imperfections, insecurities and fear; deconstructed in different fragments that copy the wrinkles, folds and volume of a body in motion.
The process of construction of the pieces is related to the acceptance of different situations. Starting from white shirts to which different finishes and dyes are applied to obtain different shades of black, because in the black I see the light, in the dark I see the white, because feeling or being dark is what my interior needs.

Valentim Quaresma
In nature nothing is lost, nothing is created and everything is transformed. But what would happen if there was no more nature for this transformation to occur? How could life still pull through? I developed this project based on this idea, that there is no more nature to produce organic life. Through upcycling materials, I envision a transmutation point where the pieces start to grow by themselves. I become a tool hatching the jewels, and the black is a void, an empty space for the genesis of matter.