Jay Vélez
Seeds
Thermoformed plastic, marble and granite
Variable dimensions
2019
The brick poolhouse, once white, now features graffiti that reveals its use and appropriation by a certain community that visits it. It is located near the entrance to the housing complex and has been used for clandestine meetings. If we look at the garbage left behind among the leaf litter and rocks, we can find cigarette stubs, empty beer bottles, cans, toilet paper, used condoms, syringes, broken glass and home pregnancy tests.
As if they formed part of the preexisting garbage, Jay Vélez placed sculptural objects made of red plastic cups fused with marble and granite slabs on the roots and leaves of a huge old rubber tree next to the poolhouse. When this tree’s bark is cut it exudes sticky white liquid, which is latex, and when it comes in contact with the air it begins to clot and solidify, undergoing a change in color from white to black while becoming rubbery and malleable.
To fuse the plastic to the stone, Vélez carried out a very different process to the coagulation of latex into rubber: the thermoforming process consists in heating a panel or sheet of plastic (in this case the plastic cup) to soften it and adapt it to the desired shape (in this case the stone). In this manner, the artist creates fluid bodies that attenuate the contradictory natures of the red plastic cup (its everyday festive use) and the sumptuousness of marble and granite.
