Using found objects such as pantyhose, purses, bras, beer cans, and shoes, Mexican artist Martin Soto Climent creates sensual, anthropomorphic sculptures with minimal intervention. Easily dismantled (with the objects returned to their original state), these poetic, continually evolving juxtapositions raise questions about ephemerality, consumption, destruction, and desire. By temporarily transforming objects, Soto Climent endows them with new, even oppositional meanings. Flat Venetian blinds are twisted into lively three-dimensional forms that recall the whirling and stamping of Flamenco dancers; while defunct windshields become delicate butterfly wings, and upside-down paper bags take on the solidity of blocks to form miniature cityscapes. Tights, with their intimate, gendered physical associations, have been a favored medium for Soto Climent.
His dramatic installation Frenetic Gossamer (2009–ongoing), exhibited in 2016 at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, consisted of a dynamic lattice made of tights stretched diagonally across a large space to evoke darting arrows. High-heeled shoes anchoring the “legs” combined with the taut, airborne crotches to imbue the whole with an erotic frisson recalling the fetishistic explorations of Surrealism.
