DEPTHS OF EXTRACTION (2017)
cast steel
50 x 70 x 35 cm
Depths of Extraction is inspired by images depicting underground mining techniques, published in Principles of Mining (1909) by Herbert C. Hoover when the future US president was working as an independent consultant in gold and ore mines around the world. In the drawings, there is a striking contrast between the seemingly organic, amoebic seams and the human-made geometric grid of access. Depths of Extraction recreates such a structure in three dimensions, as if the whole system was a mould into which the very material is now cast back.
It can also be related to the concept of Bioromanticism (Bioromantik), a kind of biocentric constructivism theorized by ex-Bauhaus ideologist Ernst Kállai, characteristic of Max Bill or the late Moholy-Nagy.