Useless

Useless at Salone del Mobile Milan

Useless

We usually hope or expect things to last forever, or at least we tend to think the longer they last the better they will become. But, what happens when it’s just the opposite, when they disappear before we can start to enjoy them? Useless is not just a simple provocation; it has been created out of need; the need to explore the importance of life and the possibility of its absence.

Useless is an electric light bulb captured in a block of melting ice. We are aware of the imminent loss of the lamp from the moment it is switched on. The same light that gives it life is simultaneously slowly depleting its existence, and yet its message lies in this mysterious fragility. Artificial and natural life, both depending of each other.

An indoor garden of nature, ice and light that slowly disappears during the event, where the work and its extreme fragility becomes almost a pretext to bring people together, walk around the artwork, contemplate a garden that in a few hours won’t exist anymore. An ephemeral ecosystem impossible to penetrate, doomed to extinction, and yet extremely seductive.

What happens when this piece’s disappearance becomes something much more valuable than its own presence? Can the absence become the primary function of an artwork?

Useless at Salone del Mobile Milan

Useless at Econciencia Madrid