Seeing into Stone refers to a technique experienced stone carvers use when they work on sculptural objects: the sculptor contemplates on the surface of a stone to anticipate the structure and natural growth beneath it. The expression Seeing into Stone describes a spiritual practice, a metaphor for tunnel vision, focusing on what lies within, invisible.

The works of the project Seeing into Stone are the result of collecting research and archival materials from various sources. In collages, a series of photographs taken by Veniamin Metenkov are combined with images from archives and product catalogs of mining and machine building companies. 

The project centers around the human relationship to rock and soil, and our shared reliance on resources contained in it. The depicted drills and digging devices are made of metals sourced from the mountains they excavate. When those machines cease to function, they rust and decay and return into the soil. Somewhere along the way, it can happen that they are put on pedestals and monumentalised for a few decades. This human-sized time span seems of little importance in relation to the long arc of geological time that has shaped the region. Yet, the images of machines, and their traces in the stones, mineworkers, and mountain ranges speak of a close relationship between humans, machines, rocks, salt and metal.

For the series of collages, silkscreening ink was developed by using pigments from the Ural Mountains. Ground up Jarosite, Volkonskoite and Malachite are used for tinting the Metenkov images and printing the tools on plexiglass.

YEAR
2019

MATERIALS
Collages / stone pigment prints on paper / plexiglass plates / screen printed with different pigments / coated steel frames / steel drills / slag / wood / glass

DIMENSIONS
Variable

SUPPORTED BY
Mondriaan Fonds 
Dutch Embassy in Russia