Aleix Plademunt approached the Matter photo project as a chance to take time out to review, explore and reach new conclusions about the production of certain consumer goods and the origins and meanings of raw materials in today’s world. From the Latin, mater (mother), the term ‘matter’, which is the title of the series, refers to the primary substance that makes up everything that is tangible. In English, matter also means problem, issue, something that is important or of concern, in an etymological nod to the conflict that is still at the heart of the most primary and primal. Plademunt’s project thus delves into one of the oldest questions of existence, which is central to physical and theological debates: the origin of matter. Be he also explores its transformation and certain uses and applications. Plademunt is interested in the ways in which human beings, who occupy a tiny, fleeting fraction of the cosmos, insist on constantly transforming and controlling matter, in a confirmation of the existence of a new era: the Anthropocene, a time when human action is the main factor changing the planet, starting precisely with the Industrial Revolution.

These ideas are embodied in photographs such as Salt, Utah, from the same series, which directly refers to the US region exploited during the Gold Rush in the 19^th century. The area experienced another rush in World War II, but for uranium, the basis of nuclear weapons, with everything that it would symbolise from then on in the context of the tensions of the Cold War. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was another country that supplied uranium. Coltan is currently mined there: it is an essential component for manufacturing mobile phones and for the technological entertainment industry, as suggested in PS2 and in King Kong; an element behind which there are thousands of deaths and conditions of human slavery to meet the interests of multinationals. Plademunt also turns his sights on gold as a central motif, due to its symbolic and historical importance. It has traditionally underpinned national currencies and is directly present in two of his transformations: as a pre-Colombian fetish in Cacique Quimbaya and in its customary ‘civilised’ form (and no less of a fetish) as an ingot in Gold.

Matter is thus an invitation to reflect on the complexity that prevails in Western progress, in a narrative journey from the return to the most pristine (matter) to the clearest political and social implications of its transformation and uses. Plademunt’s photographs are therefore not isolated entities intended just to be looked at, but rather visual phases that form a complex narrative where the historical moments that form the common bond of “matter” crisscross, starting from the inert seed of the combination of conflicts, violence, slavery, consumption and destructions of the environment behind some of today’s most bloody contradictions.

Carlos Martín