'Sand, Paper, Scissors' by Belén Uriel

“Sand, Paper, Scissors” is a play on the name of the child’s game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” that pits these various materials and objects against one another. These three materials (objects) can currently be found in Museum Wiesbaden’s project room, where they serve as the starting point of the three works on display there: Sand is the original material for the works in glass – Untitled (Vitral) / Ohne Titel (Kirchenfenster) 2015/16 and Blue Chain / Blaue Kette 2016. Paper forms the material basis of Lama no Sapato / Schlamm auf dem Schuh 2014/15, while scissors, in turn, were used to bring the material into its rather unpaper-like form.

Belén Uriel transforms industrial, machine or handcrafted objects and traces of machine work into other materials, stripping the original objects of their meaning. What remains are familiar objects whose meaning now lies in their form, or, sometimes new forms created with familiar patterns from everyday life.

In Lama no Sapato, molds of tire tracks in mud create patterns put into circular forms. Positioned in a row on the exhibit floor, the tire tracks take on a sculptural quality in their new form.

Untitled (Vitral) was created especially for the show at Museum Wiesbaden. The work’s formal language derives from shards of glass held together and re-formed into a pane using tape. Affixed to the massive windows of Theodor Fischer’s museum structure, Uriel’s glass objects, her “church windows” of broken glass, examine the aesthetic value of the re-formed fragments.

Belén Uriel, (*1974 in Madrid) live and works in Lisbon and London. She studied at the Complutense University in Madrid and Chelsea College in London.