In her work, Mariana Castillo Deball investigates different ways of knowing, apprehending and classifying the world, depending on each historical moment and particular context. This interest has led her to tour and visit museums, archives, collections and libraries in different parts of the world and to work with the history of museography, collections and classification systems.
For 'Mathematical Distortions', the artist took as a starting point mathematical models belonging to the University of Göttingen, in , whose collection was started by the mathematician Felix Klein at the beginning of the 20th century. Klein is one of the most recognized figures in the study of non-Euclidean geometry - that is, of more than three dimensions - and he built numerous models in wood, plaster, metal and paper as teaching tools for his students. After working with the familiar conceptions of space - such as cones and spheres - the scientist chose to materialize non-Euclidean geometry in different ways. The best known case is that of the famous Klein Bottle, a kind of four-dimensional Moebius Strip - which is actually impossible to see in three dimensions - for which he made a sculptural approximation.
The artist's interest in this type of procedure is due to the fact that she seeks to eliminate the distance that lies between ideas and the material world, since Klein's collection operates as a transcription of abstract concepts to the visual and three-dimensional field. In other words, it is about the bringing into existance of an idea, which works as a metaphor for the construction of knowledge in different fields.
'Mathematical Distortions' is part of the 'Uncomfortable Objects' project, which investigates objects that, in one way or another, are difficult to classify or fit into pre-established categories. In the artist's words, these are objects that “are constantly being erased, replaced, neutralized and destroyed in order to make room for new things, but this erasure is never complete; we are surrounded by more and more things, quasi-things, fragments, hybrids and distortions.”[1]
Taking the Klein collection as a reference, these “mathematical distortions” were made with plaster, rabbit glue and natural pigments following the scagliola technique, an Italian method used in the 17th and 18th centuries to imitate marbles and precious stones. These "counterfeit replicas" of mathematical models, which seem to come from a fictitious archaeological setting, remind us that all sciences largely invent and imagine the phenomena they seek to approach, displacing and creating new, ever-changing paradigms.
In this type of project, where science, art and fiction coexist, Castillo Deball draws attention to the way in which we know and transform the world. With 'Mathematical Distorsions', the artist emphasizes that each "discovery", each new scientific investigation, is mediated by both culture and imagination.
EKA, July 2020
http://asapjournal.com/mariana-castillo-deball-finding-oneself-outside-jennifer-josten/
https://artishockrevista.com/2019/02/22/mariana-castillo-deball-new-museum/
https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/mariana-castillo-deball?fbclid=IwAR1XkoWSgZrWpSqOCr9UquqD4XNeiNIiXsEefHRLOT3Rg5UUErMZIdJH2U
http://thisistomorrow.info/articles/mariana-castillo-deball-finding-oneself-outside
[1] Mariana Castillo Deball, “A dialogue of the Alchemist and Sulphur,” in: Finding Oneself Outside: Uncomfortable Objects: Mariana Castillo Deball: dOCUMENTA (13), Berlin, Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, 2012, no page number.
