These two photos from the series Art Forms in Mechanism (2009-2016) show a way of working that is typical of Linarejos Moreno, based on the link between history and the present in such diverse fields as art, science, architecture and industry. She frequently undertakes lines of investigation that draw on examples from the past and updates them, re-reading them from different viewpoints and making them her own. Photos are just a part of the outcome of these broader processes, but they determine their conceptual and artistic characteristics and anchor them to markedly personal scenarios and installations.

Art Forms in Mechanism has its origins in a book by sculptor Karl Blossfeldt called Urformen der Kunst (1928). Like his later Wundergarten der Natur (1932), this book was a landmark in the new German objectivity in photography. The first book was published in English as Art Forms in Nature. Moreno makes her own interpretation here, changing 'Nature' to 'Machinery'. But that is not all that she does. Her photos represent fragments of plants built by her. Blossfeldt took samples from nature, isolated them and turned them into models that he could then recreate in a forge to use in architecture, but Moreno constructs artificial plants that call into question the natural function of the landscape and evidence the ubiquity of constructs in everyday life.

Like her other series, her photos are presented in black and white and mounted on long pieces of hessian fabric. The transition area between the photo paper and the fabric is completed using white paint, the outlines of which fade into the cloth. She uses the same procedure in STOP BACK SOON STOP (2020), Double Entry and The Cloud Chamber (2018), among other series. As in some of these other series, books are essential in providing an understanding of the scale of the project, its links to history and her artistic goals. Two books form part of the full installation. One is a copy of the second edition in English of Blossfeldt's book: a cloth-bound hard cover with the title and a synthetic symbol embossed in red. Beside it is a book produced by Moreno herself with the title of her series and a similar symbol, also embossed in red on an almost identical cloth-bound hard cover. The inside of this second book has been manipulated: the word nature is changed to mechanism throughout the text.

The details of the construction of the plants photographed when seen close up in the large format used show the hand-crafting that went into producing the images. As an organic material, hessian fabric has its limits: it gives the pieces a plant-like appearance, as if the support and the forms represented are seeking to reach a physical arrangement, in a sort of natural marriage between them. In general the installation (as shown, for example, at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid on the occasion of PHotoEspaña 16) has other features which are also characteristic of Moreno's work, such as strands of wool linking objects and images and stockings containing long objects that emerge directly from some of the photos. In her installations, space acquires the general aspect of a graph where 2-dimensional forms coexist with functional objects and scraps of history.

Álvaro de los Ángeles