Luciana Lamothe: One Frame Life

Luciana Lamothe‘s work is mainly sculptural. Her large-scale participatory sculptures are known for their ability to take materials to their limits of resistance, but also for the sensations of the person who walks through them. In her sculptures, Luciana Lamothe tests the strength, ductility, flexibility and hardness of wood and metal. She examines their maximum possibilities, to demonstrate how the extent of a transformation process can lead to a new representation of the material itself. Her materials are often subjected to transformations that result in the weakening of the structure, revealing their fragility and lightness as opposed to their characteristic strength.

Photography, drawing, performance and video are also an integral part of her approach. In this new exhibition, “One Frame Life”, the artist highlights the correspondences between her sculptures, videos and photographs by exploring the minimal and maximal potentialities of each medium. The artist is inspired by the transience of time and the fragility of materials in the face of a body constrained by urban space. The exploration of the resilience of materials is here extended to the medium of photography and video.

Luciana Lamothe, by pushing the extreme limits of certain resources, reinforces and reverses their initial use; in the case of the sculptures, for example, the functionality of the door handles is deactivated by openings and cuts in their form. In the photographs presented, the daytime recording of the artist’s reflections on polluted urban waters cancels out clear visibility and generates an opaque image that subverts the idea of self-portraiture; in the videos, the use of the frame as a minimal unit of audiovisual recording cancels out the movement and visibility of the image. Thus, through absence, glare or opacity, the body becomes central.