Montserrat Torrents

©Patrick Bedout

More or less consciously, I decided one day, over ten years ago, to dedicate myself to a research project that was both emotional and technical, by spreading damp earth over various grids and heat-resistant metal skeletons.
The bottom of a dried-up pond seems the best visual example of the behavior of clay as it shrinks and releases its water. The initially uniform mass breaks apart into multiple islets of random shapes, according to certain physical constraints.
This deliberate fragmentation of the earth, linked to its shrinkage, evokes contradictory feelings: each module is detached from its neighboring fragments but, paradoxically, definitively anchored to them by the metal structure that supports and secures it with the utmost solidity.
Finally, when the gaze moves away from the surface of the earth, the whole regains a flawless cohesion through the belonging of each fragment to a whole of which I am both the observer and the creator.