In a brief moment, your idea can appear complete and tangible. Then you start to concretize the idea, attempting to word it or build it, but this very act of realization will inevitably distort it.
We wish to freeze that very moment, in which an idea appears complete and tangible in all its simplicity. Bubble embodies this very wish of freezing the brief moment. A moment is such a short and abstract period in time, and because it lacks the substance to be defined, a moment is fragile.
The act of freezing the moment is then for us related to preserving the fragile.
And what is more fragile than a bubble? A bubble is a thin film of water floating in the air.
Its visual appearance is a transparent and light form covered with fluctuating colors that never quite settle. Only defined by a tenuous membrane, the bubble is easily broken, and often, it lasts only for a few seconds before it bursts and disappears.
The bubble will be a bubble that will float freely in space. It is set to create friction between the anxious expectation that it may burst any second, as bubbles usually do, and the realization that it will not. In freezing the moment, Bubble thus embodies the potential of capturing the dream of the idea, complete and tangible. And it lasts.
Grants and sponsorships 1.2 Millon DKK
Aros Museum – Montana Møbler – Bekket Fonden – Privet donors
Suppliers
NanoLab AAlborg – Danish Teknological Institute – Kuraray Japan
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau. A famous quote of one of the most proclaimed naturalists and the ground philosophy to this work.
(Berlin 2008) During a visit to a collector house, Pio Diaz would be fascinated by the ideas and works of the Darwinists and naturalists. After an epiphanic contemplation of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. which would wake up a strong passion for the concepts of the known universe to certain cultures by a period in the history of the human until now.
What is the world if not what we have seen and what has been presented to us? However, that reality and perception is a continuous change due to exploration and discoveries.
During the naturalist, the world suffers a strong transformation in the perception of nature as a center of the world, introducing new species, new forms, and new relations with nature.
The bliss and excitement from the clash and collapse between nature and culture, bringing shadows from the past and surrounding present spaces with it are the main interests of this work that would take in being develop something around 10 years of botanical research, illustration, 3d models techniques, casting processes, unique machinery development, and new materials.
The result is an atemporal elegant and delicate a shape fitter light installation. that blends between nature and spirit, form and shadow, past and present, and transmute nature from our own eyes.
“I have always been attracted to weeds. I remember collecting them at a very early age at my grandfather’s farm in Gualeguaychú walking through Paraná delta. The place is wild heaven. Poison plants, poison frogs, alligators, huge boas capable of swallowing a cow, snakes, tomcats are just a few of the dangerous inhabitants in the Paraná Delta. I remember walking with my young cousins trough the uncertain forest, the oldest who was about 11, was carrying a rifle for protection. Nature still is certainly a hostile environment to man and man-made constructions in the Delta.” – Pío Díaz
(Copenhagen 2016) Weeds and their wild unconfined clash of nature-culture reveal that forced fragility of man-made ruled landscape. We constantly sophisticate the laws in which we inhabit our personal and social spaces. We are in essence nature but coexist in the laws of culture. We scape nature with culture but nature is always right thereafter us in a fitness race for evolution. We mirror in nature but behave in culture. The more we understand the culture the better rewarded our social cognitive skills are. So we do not only fight nature but we fight nature in ourselves.
“Weeds are popularly seen as unwanted, valueless and troublesome plants. And the war against them is a strong one. So it was in the exploration of neglected spaces, wastelands and the wilder fingers of the city that they were found. Voracious nettles springing up in the unkempt corner of Solbjerg Kirkegård blood-red poppies blooming beside an abandoned factory, beach rose clinging to the water’s edge under Sjaællandsbroen“ – Pío Díaz
The artwork consists of the placement of the subject through a stuffed method creating a hierarchy by juxtaposition displayed in great format glass boxes – each piece is one of its kind. WEEDS are some of the most acclaimed pieces by Pio Diaz.
Unspeakable views of shadows; breathing like unknown and unfamiliar faces, in a reconciliatory and meditative encounter between the present and the continual unfolding of our existence.
One of the less documented works of the artist Pio Diaz (Copenhagen 1999), and the result of a night of inspiration and trust games. Ashes grew in significance to the artist once he linked the presence of the shadows and the auto reflection on them as a peaceful contemplation and casual and healthy dialogue between death and the natural human life expectations.
Several conversations with random elders and the deep interest in carbon made lifeforms and the origin of life. Shaped ones of the most hypnotic of his works.
“Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, We know Major Tom’s a junkie, Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all-time low” – David Bowie
‘Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra – sola igene del mondo – il militarismo, il patriottismo, il gesto distruttore. Noi vogliamo distruggere i musei, le biblioteche, le accademie d’ogni specie e combattere contro il moralismo, il femminismo e contro ogni villar opportunistica o utilitaria” -Manifesto Futurista
Some hundred years ago a group of Italian intellectuals called the futurist formulated the idea of destroying the proud monuments of the past. They glorified industrialization and mechanization. They loved cars and planes for their speed and vitality. They believed the man had proved himself to be in control of nature, and they saw destruction as artistic expression: tradition is nothing, the future is all.
The artist Pio Diaz, and his former wife Thyra Hilden (Copenhagen 2004). Call to a reflection over our moral statements and institutions by burning symbols of common culture and generating shocking reaction intended to awake in the spectator trivial questions that will end in profound ontological issues and throbbing ideas of preservation and consciousness.
A magnanimous work and his more exhibited one, that started with the burning of the Danish culture institute of Rome, followed by the Louvre museum, Aros Museum, Frankfurt cathedral, Trevi Fountain and ended up with one of the most televised transmitted art installation in the last decade: the Rome colosseum; reached by more than 500 000 people and Giving to Pio a worldwide recognition in the world of art.