Ma [espai en blanc] by Agnès WO

Artist list

Agnès WO

Ma A Japanese term translated as sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015, interval or pause in space and time. Time and space are indivisible; empty space is as important as the space that is filled; sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015 interacts with substance and gives it form. The concept ma can refer to empty gaps in sculpture, spatial intervals in architecture, the silence between notes in a song or the pauses in the uttering of a phrase.
(Francis D.K. Ching, Visual Dictionary of Architecture)

Ma, the origin:
Agnès WO thinks of white as a raw material. Or, going further back, as original material of her creations. White as basic ethereal vocabulary, ally of light, articulable as a phrase, a melody or a structure is articulated. The colourless colour is both presence and absence of physical matter: it is the tension that sustains the texture and the shape of a jewel, yet it is also the surrounding ephemera that traps the sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015, making it part of the final piece.

Ma, the process:
Agnès WO is an architect and it is noticeable: from white she extracts the space she needs and leads it wherever she wishes. By manipulating the scale, she adapts tectonics to the human anatomy. Decontextualizing the material, she transports it into an unexpected sphere. The wild willow is converted into delicate porcelain; remnants of pottery become naturalized ingredients, like a coral skeleton. The flatness of paper folds over itself and fills out, or unravels to encage the air with complex organic trellises. The artist also experiments with unconventional materials, all full of white: resin, silicone, paraffin, cotton and so on, which she manipulates, freeing them of their limitations to offer them an unexpected life.

Ma the exhibition:
Agnès WO engages the architects Clara de Solà-Morales and Eduardo Cadaval to create the base of the selected jewels. Visitors will be able to move around the space conceived in such as way so that the pieces are expressed in all their physical eloquence, in an intimate connection with the viewer. The visitor's eye will be able to rest on the details of every piece, on the expression of the textures and the domesticated materials. They will discover what unites them as well as what distinguishes them and underscores their evolution. Therefore, reading them one by one, the observer will be impregnated with the artist's vocabulary, the language of the sulek-burcu-emptiness-2015 and fullness that Agnès WO places in contrast and balance that are masterfully suspended in white.
-Marta Rojals

About the artist:
Agnès WO is an architect from the ETSAB-UPC (2002) and Senior Technician in Fine Arts and Design of Artistic Jewellery from the Escola Massana (2005). She is currently teaching contemporary jewellery projects at the Escola d'Art i Superior de Disseny "Llatja", where she also coordinates the jewellery department.

She has shown and sold work from her collections at venues such as the TATE Modern in London, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Centro de Arte CaixaForum and La Pedrera of Barcelona.

This exhibition is part of OFF JOYA.