Developed over almost a decade, Matter is the most ambitious work to date by Catalan artist Aleix Plademunt. It takes as its starting point the word matter, which stems from mater, the Latin word for mother. Matter refers to any substance with a physical existence. For this project, Aleix Plademunt collaborated with scientific teams from more than 15 countries, including Switzerland, engaged in the study of matter in a multitude of forms. At the junction of the living and the inert, they investigate the particles that make up the fabric of the universe, geologic eons and eras, vanished civilisations and their relics, human anatomy and its robotic or artistic reproductions, among many other fields. Matter is constant, inert and indifferent, and yet it makes life possible. Humans, in response, shape it and study it relentlessly, but we have yet to succeed in unravelling the fundamental mysteries of life. By combining photographs from multiple contexts across the world, the artist offers us a singular and complex tale about the human condition, through the lenses of history, biology, physics and geography. He bears witness to human ingenuity, curiosity and creativity, as well as to its violence and its longing for power and control. His photographs weave together the documentary and the intimate, forming an equally personal and political narrative, incisive and acutely beautiful.
The exhibition at the Centre de la photographie Genève featured a selection of 154 images and videos from the project, drawn from a corpus of over 600 photographs, in a scenography designed for its exhibition space.
