Jaime Pitarch

Momentum #15 is indicative of the work of Jaime Pitarch. In this piece, the artist reconstructs an abandoned piece of furniture through a complex system of balances and counter-balances, which converge to create a site of extreme fragility in equilibrium. The slightest difference in arrangement will cause the work to fall apart.

In the 90’s, the artist left his home country of Spain to undertake an MA at the Royal College of Art. As he did not have the means to buy materials for the production of his work, he would source them from elsewhere, often coming across abandoned pieces of furniture at the end of their usable life-cycle. In this case, the object, the subject and the artist are all divorced from each other, a sense that Pitarch makes manifest through his re-arrangement of the object itself.

In his childhood, the artist used to practice magic and it is this interest in the illusion that still fuels his practice today.

“My Momentums employ the principles of magic but without magic – they reveal the ways in which they were constructed. When I was a kid I used to think that the techniques used by the magicians in their performances were too beautiful to be hidden. In my work, the object is arranged in a subtle game of balance always visible to the viewer, as opposed to the hidden nature of the magician’s trick.”