Working with nature: clay and chance

It starts with a simple idea: massive cubes of clay, half a meter high. The sculptures of Mexican artist Bosco Sodi (*1970 in Mexico City), cubes of fired clay stacked in high columns, ought to have exploded while being fired due to the extreme heat released in the material: sand, earth, and water. The richly illustrated publication on Sodi’s Clay Cubes explores the course of his experiment. He worked for several months creating the cubes, from compounding the material through layering and forming to drying and firing them in a kiln built especially for this purpose. Piled up to columns in the exhibition, they resemble the proportions of the human body and at the same time create an architecture reduced to the essential. Each cube bears the traces of the work process, following Sodi’s typical approach: the process of trying out and arriving as a result whose appearance he may influence, but not foresee.