[Title] water mill
[Artist] Jorge Pardo
[Date] May 19 – July 19, 2005
The Cuba born Jorge Pardo is a contemporary artist who has challenged the meaning of boundaries between genres, beginning his career with sculpture, then expanding his artistic activity to the realm of architecture, interior design, lighting and media art. The motif that Jorge chose was the “watermill.”
Hermès’ 2005 annual theme is “As the river flows” There are fertile rivers that nurtured ancient civilizations. Rivers also exist as routes of transport to serve as backbone to the industrial revolution. Given different roles in each age, the river still flows on smoothly, without change, today.
It was in ancient Greece that the watermill appeared for the first time in history, the first machine ever to be invented by humans as a means to gain energy from the river. Their idea was to use the power of water to grind wheat into flour.
The “watermill” that Jorge created is in the shape of a sphere. Just as the world’s first astronaut Gagarin observed, “The earth is blue,” Jorge’s work is a metaphor of the earth, a rich planet brimming with water.
The water that gathers from the mountain becomes a river, flowing into the sea, once again turning into rainwater. Jorge expresses this cycle of the earth through an acrylic sphere hanging from the ceiling. The sphere, emitting gentle light, is the exact image of the earth seen from outer space. The only visible Hermès products are espadrilles, strap shoes and platform shoes, lizard and scattered onto the work.
The back panel shows the faces of craftsmen who work under Jorge. Like Courbet’s “The Artist’s Studio” (1855), they are invaluable beings for sustaining the flow of the river called artistic creation.
Jorge Pardo
Jorge Pardo was born in 1963 in Havana, Cuba. In 1998, he presented his current atelier/home as commission work by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2000, he designed the interior of the bookstore in DIA Art Center in New York.