Imminent Impressions - Madrid : Espacio 28014

Plastic is a unique material that during the last decades has been synonymous with progress and multiple uses. The problem lies in the focus of its life cycle: the linear model followed by the resources used, from its manufacture to its subsequent disposal, often after a single use and for a short time, generates an incessant accumulation of waste. Much of it ends up in the seas and oceans which is in turn becoming a problem of great magnitude that endangers not only animals and plants but also the human species.

Since 2018, Victoria Marques Pinto, has collected pieces of plastic from three different points in the Mediterranean to form a collection of more than a thousand pieces. A selection of these pieces is the starting point of Imminent Impressions, with which Marques Pinto wishes to emphasise the proliferation of this foreign material that invariably already forms part of the natural environment. Her artistic process, which is multidisciplinary and open, involves photographing some of the plastics collected and then reintegrating them into a landscape that she also intervenes with paint. The final result will be a photograph that is the sum of many, a single image, that like a collage shows an imaginary landscape; an illusory of rocky, compact, coloured and perfectly homogeneous consistencies of plastic pieces that are incorporated almost naturally into these seascapes.

The sense of unreality that Victoria Marques Pinto achieves with this imaginary natural space, puts us before an object that inevitably already forms part of the landscape of our seas. Beyond the aesthetic sense of the project in Imminent Impressions, the artist tries to convey the current damage to the planet and the wide distribution that this waste reaches with a clear message. Therefore, each of the works is related to a specific spot and informs us of the exact location where each individual piece of plastic was found and hence the certificate of authenticity of each work is accompanied by its respective original piece of plastic.

In each of the images created, Victoria Marques Pinto conveys the Mediterranean feeling and light, as well as her own sensitivity to nature in such a way that the spectator feels a sense of environmental permanence. The artist also manages to position us as beings who are affected, overwhelmed and uncomfortable by such an invasion of waste, since we are not only observing a photograph, as unfortunately, the reality of our seas is not far from the plastic mountains that the artist imagines.

Imminent Impressions intends to launch a wake-up call through the aesthetic power of its images and thus, awaken in the viewer a responsible change to be able to face the alarming situation that plastic waste in the oceans poses to us.

Elvira Rilova

Cultural Manager & Independent Curator