Poltergeister Collection of Minerals

 

Poltergeister Collection of Minerals, 2017, triptych, 130 x 170 x 30 cm, wood, lacquer, metal, semi-precious stones

 

At first sight, the triptych Poltergeist Mineral Collection is a humorous reference to American minimalism, in which an important role was played by the seriality of monochromatic paintings. It consists of three oversized, almost identical blocks mimicking the aesthetics of Emmental cheese. This seemingly obvious pop aesthetic is in fact misleading.

 

The meaning of this work lies in the tension between the material and the immaterial, the ephemeral and the eternal. Eternal matter is represented here by minerals. These are rare semi-precious stones, characterized by their hardness (at the top of the Mohs Hardness Scale).

 

An important figure is the poltergeist. It is an intangible and inscrutable being that is known to move material objects. This spirit, being immaterial itself, expresses its desire for matter by collecting and archiving the most solid, durable and hard things that have come into being over the ages inside rocks. And as it happens, there is an unexplained mystery so typical of ghosts. The thing is how these minerals could have found themselves inside perfectly sealed holes within the cheese that is an expression of impermanence? How could they have crystalized for so long in the bubbles created by the accumulation and expansion of carbon dioxide during the cheese’s maturation, which takes 14 months at most?

 

Poltergeist mineral collection, triptych.