Laura Larocca

"My work has an atmosphere of strangeness. I am a stranger in the territory that is immediate to me. I explore it as a field of work. I observe, I apprehend in natural elements and I collect manually. I seek to create new perspectives and a possible emotional understanding of the landscape of which I am a part. I am intrigued by the processes that the found materials went through, and I imagine the triggering factors of my encounters. I reflect on the affective content of the materials that aroused my interest and I incorporate them into the work of art, taking advantage of their properties and metamorphosis. Starting from this consistent logic with the found materials, I create drawings, paintings and objects with repeated actions, where hypertextures, superimpositions and accidents appear." With a pseudo-scientific methodology, the artist seeks to know the territory of which, as an artist, she is a part, by personal choice. She explores, travels and observes. She analyzes the areas of accumulation of materials, the frequency of the findings, the influence of the weather or the tide. She collects manually and investigates the origin of the materiality found, with scientific advice. She collects these structures on the beaches of Formentera with the authorization of the Conselleria de Medio Ambiente del Govern Balear. In this work, she questions the massive presence on the beaches of the remains of an animal species, belonging to the class Porifera of the family Spongiide, called common marine sponge. What were the conditions that led to the arrival of the sponges on the beach? What processes and metamorphoses did they undergo? Imagine their history and path until their fortuitous encounter. In the methodology of her work, she incorporates painting to explore the physical capabilities of the collected marine sponge skeletons. From the absorption property of the material, she observes the changes in texture, volume, weight and flexibility. Measure and weigh the marine sponge on a precision scale, before and after immersing it completely in water-based pigments. Record the physical changes produced and then pour the material absorbed by the sponge on the support. He seeks to obtain as many results as possible. The paint accumulates, settles, cracks, integrates or mixes. Traces of porosity and of the natural porosity and irregularity of the sponges. The experimental result, despite its methodical character, is strange and accidental. With this method of working, he seeks to create a possible emotional understanding of the landscape.