MUTABLES EXHIBITION
Chemistry describes all living things as beings of carbon. Animals, plants, fungi, bacteria... The chemistry of life on Earth is based on organic molecules whose central element is carbon. From a carbon-centric point of view, rocks are not alive.
And yet, when we look at Paula Acosta's work, we perceive something entirely different. There is an undeniable sense of life in these non-rocks; so much so, that they seem to shift ever so slightly each time we look away, only to freeze the moment we turn our attention back to them.
Rocks are born, transform, and die. They sustain ecosystems; fertile soils arise from them, they harbor microorganisms, and they hold fossils. For Paula, the mineral world is alive, and I sense that she, within the world of humans, becomes through her artistic practice a kind of mineral medium.
In conversations with the artist, she has explained that her working method is rooted in listening. An idea may be the reason she sits down to work; however, the rest of the process unfolds as a tactile conversation with the raw material. It is as if these clays insist on telling us that everything on the planet is alive. In their forms we see hollows, curves, smooth and pitted surfaces. We see mountains, desert landscapes, bones, and caves. Her work becomes an animist manifesto on the passage of time, on the transformation of matter, on the shifts of life within life itself.
In the exhibition we also find other pieces inspired by the cacao fruit. More than fifty of these marks are displayed as evidence of a possibility: cacao is at risk of extinction, and Paula turned this fact into a driving force for her work. Although all the pieces come from the same mold, the artist approaches each one individually, seeking out its singularity, listening to what each piece has to say, and imprinting it with that same rock-like quality.
Alongside this process of sensitive attentiveness to material, Paula's practice reveals a remarkable exercise in technical rigor, sustained for more than thirty years, which allows us to perceive these pieces as though they were the result of geological processes, untouched by human fabrication.
Surrounded by Paula's pieces, we cannot help but feel, at first, the ephemeral nature of life, the fleetingness of our own existence, together with the fear of disappearance. And yet, this feeling transforms into a serene certainty that life will go on, with or without cacao; with or without us. The sculptures reassure us that life always continues.
Iñaki Chávarri, September 2025.
2025
