These sculptures are modeled after the remains of broken ancient columns. Sometimes they are covered with colorful, shimmering glaze, sometimes coated with a crackle pattern from raku firing, already symbolizing a process of decay through their surface. The fragmented, fluted column serves Torres Forero as a placeholder for a bygone epoch of European culture. Iconographically, the column generally stands for power, and in this context, also for colonial abuse of power. Torres Forero combines these architectural relics with sculptures that depict corn.

Corn takes on the role of a cultural index fossil in Forero’s works. On the wooden planks, one finds oversized burst kernels of corn — in other words, popcorn. Popcorn is normally associated with leisure activities, cinema visits, and the like, not with symbol-laden sculptures or a vanished high culture. Yet who knows that excavations in Mexico, the homeland of maize, have uncovered popcorn kernels over 4,000 years old?

As an ancient cultivated plant, corn is not only a staple food throughout South America but also closely tied to indigenous cosmogonies and thus to the continent’s identity. The oldest depictions of gods in this part of the world are corn deities. Myths recount the creation of humans from yellow and white corn cobs. Torres Forero addresses this aspect in a series of seven small porcelain pieces. In these, he performs, in miniature, a gradual metamorphosis: from a nearly phallic seedling or larval form, through various plant stages, to the so-called adult form, ending in a rounded anthropomorphic figure.

Thus, he illustrates a processual development and the emergence of new life — directly beside the column fragments and artificial ruins, whose moss-colored patina exudes the charm of decay, while the metamorphic objects, in pristine white, stand for new beginnings. A chromatic statement.

Old World and New World, high culture and pop culture, decay and growth come together in his — indeed also politically tinged — installation.

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TEXT BY 

Dr. Barbara Weyandt

Opening of the exhibition series “Lichtes Doppel”
Artists: Sahar Baharymoghaddam and David Torres Forero

Introduction “Lichtes Doppel”, Kunstraum Ehrenbreitstein, 08.11.2019

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Photographer: David Torres

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