Tank — Andrew Roberts

Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, 2023. Medical grade silicone, 3D print in polylactic acid, polyurethane foam, steel armature, pulley, hook, chain, resin and paint. Variable dimensions.

Tank is the intersection of two parallel investigations on the ocean as a object subjected to industrial violence and its incarnation in science fiction. The sea as a war platform and its fantastic allegorization into cultural artifacts dates back to the first European ships that landed in the Americas. Legends about aquatic monsters plagued the imagination of explorers and with it began the otherness of all living beings on this continent, including its natives. The mythical creatures quickly found their place in propagandistic etchings, official chronicles and cartographies of the time, thus becoming tools of conquest. It would be impossible to recognize the ocean as a theater of operations without first understanding the myths that shaped it.

This relationship between bodies of water as fields of blood and their rendering through artifice extends to current times. The 90s brought with them the opening of Baja Studios —a filming tank owned by 20th Century Fox— on the coast a few miles south of the US-Mexico border. Located on the outskirts of Tijuana, the artist's hometown, the studio saw the production of movies like Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Deep Blue Sea, known for their rhetoric about military interventionism and the ocean as a space of dangers needed to be tamed. As fossil fuel was being drained from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico, the US film industry insisted on portraying the sea as an amusement park for extractivism.

The exhibition presents us with an immersive environment. Three large scale sculptures inhabit the space, composed of silicone elements, 3D prints and metallic devices. Each work transits the threshold between the props of a film and an archaeological object. Maritime illustrations are transformed into tattoos, bestiaries are configured to chrome bas-reliefs, and chronicles take the form of monstrous sea creatures with silicone skin.

Fish-Handler's Disease, 2023. Medical grade silicone, pigmented silicone, 3D print in polylactic acid, polyurethane foam, resin, paint, aluminum table and bucket. Variable dimensions.

Acute Decompression Syndrome, 2023. Medical grade silicone, 3D print in polylactic acid, polyurethane foam, resin and paint. Variable dimensions.

Tank, Installation view at Pequod Co., Mexico City, 2023.

All photos by Sergio López.