Rotterdam-based artist Lara Almarcegui (Zaragosa, 1972) stands out with a radical combination of social engagement and conceptual methods. Her research of wastelands, ruins and construction materials is linked to themes such as attention for the environment, the consequences of economic growth, the effects of how space is utilized, the slipping by of time in space, the potential of decay.
Almaregui’s guides and slide projections on derelict plots in metropolises such as London, New York and São Paulo were shown for the first time as a coherent whole in the exhibition. Pictorial accounts of the excavation of floors in Secession in Vienna and the RAI Building in Amsterdam, among others, are presented in mutual correlation.
But the core of the exhibition was a new installation based on an exact calculation of all the building material used in the construction of TENT’s central space. The monumental piles of recycled demolition rubble heaped up in the gallery were a precise equivalent of the original materials of which it consists, from a pile of over 62 cubic meters of concrete to just under one cubic meter of glass.
Thanks to: A.V.S. Engineering, Calduran Kalkzandsteen B.V., Drentse Recycling Maatschappij B.V., ExPoSchuim Nijmegen B.V., Heros Sluiskil, J. Luyt B.V, Maltha Glasrecycling, P. van der Kooij Schiedam, REKO Recycling Kombinatie and Fonds BKVB.