Description
Chapter 1 – Territory
Pasto is a project born from nearly three years of exploration, trial, and error. At its heart are the wild native grasslands of the Pampas, which serve as both subject and material. What began as a study of materiality gradually became a meditation on the land itself, urging us to see our surroundings with renewed vision.
The Argentine countryside, vast and fertile, is not only an economic powerhouse but also a symbolic ground in the construction of national identity. Yet, its imagery has long been romanticized, idealized through myths of the gaucho and heroic rural life, while often obscuring its tensions, complexities, and relationship to industry.
Our interest lies in the margins, in the overlooked spaces where fragments of wild grasslands persist: along roadsides, beside streams, at the foot of fences. These remnants species like Cebadilla Criolla (Bromus Unioloides) speak to resilience, to survival outside systems of production. They carry biological, ecological, and cultural value, and in re-centering them, we reclaim them not as remnants of the past, but as resources for reimagining our present.
Chapter 2 – Molds
To create is to transform. Each gesture, each technical decision, is an intervention in reality. Through the act of making, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, the overlooked is re-seen.
The process begins with a ritual of gathering and classifying grasses, observing their textures and forms, and patiently binding them into fragile constructions. These forms, though delicate and impermanent, become molds—ephemeral vessels awaiting transformation.
Once aluminum is poured, their fragile existence disappears, yet their essence endures. This paradox, the fleeting and the eternal, the delicate and the brutal—sits at the center of the project. Here, destruction is not erasure, but metamorphosis.
Chapter 3 – Casting
The grasses, collected from the stillness of the Pampas, meet their counterpart in the industrial furnaces of Greater Buenos Aires. It is here that landscape and industry converge through fire and molten metal.
Adapting the “lost wax” casting method, we substitute wax with grass, embedding the forms in earth and sand before introducing aluminum at 700°C. The grasses vanish in flame, but their presence is captured with astonishing fidelity, the veins, the gaps, the fragility of their structure preserved in metal.
Rather than polishing away imperfections, the process embraces them. Each flaw is testimony, each irregularity a witness to origin. The work resists standardization, privileging memory and time over perfection. In solidifying, the pieces become archives of a moment, ephemeral life translated into permanence.
DIMENSION: 86cm / 22cm / 40cm
MATERIAL: Aluminum
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Driven by the curiosity to explore different materials and their techniques, RIES Studio approach to practice is influenced by the mixed experience of their team, who, through a collective vision, manage to combine processes linked to craftsmanship and industry to create pieces that seek to elevate the experience of everyday living. Navigating between aesthetic simplicity and problem-solving complexity, their work spans various fields, ranging from the design of small objects to interior design projects, as well as the creation of unique pieces and serial production.
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