Mercedes explains:

Mercedes Vicente (b 1958) is an artist based in Galicia, Spain.
She folds fabric to produce sculptures looking like beautiful pottery or shells.

Mercedes explains:







"The development of my technique has been very personal. I started it in 2008, at first with simple and rudimentary shapes, each one getting better through time in execution, materials and tools.

There are two opposite methods in my workflow: the one that pursues the control to achieve the intended figure, and the one that lets the
wavy material and the sinuosity of curved line
take the lead. This tension is translated, sometimes, into an imprecise irregularity which impedes the pattern perfection.

Under unlikely names, my spirals try to emulate the old shell collectors’ taxonomies. Each conch tells an hypothetical story that may as well have been found in nature, and also speaks of the absence of a body.
A body replaced by the choreography of a hand that tenses, directs, veers, centers and moves the material as an invisible breath. 

My spirals are built inside out, rather than from
the surface. They are shapes to which one arrives
by means of an internal order. I’m not trying to
create an appearance; I’m looking to imitate the
sort of growth found in nature. 

The textiles that form it are industrial and of vegetal origin but lacking in features that make it a
material suitable for building. Through an initial
treatment, I make the fabric capable of behaving
like the skeleton of the artwork. At the same time,
a hard, ventral part appears adding tension to the
surface, as well as another thin dorsal part that expand.

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