Material

Sucrose

By

Made in

Composite 109 Pigment 51

Sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose

Photos: Silke Weißbach

Correspondence 1/4 (yellow)

Correspondence 1/4, 2020 is part of a sculpture series using industrial sugar processed towards the stage of Hard Crack – a transition state in the caramelisation process of sugar where the solution reaches its lowest point in the water, exactly 0,01 per cent.

It is the moment when sugar can be both: highly dangerous and extremely beautiful. An entropic existence, fugitive and fading, tells us energy is more easily lost than contained.

Correspondence offspring a world of indeterminate possibilities concertinaed by incomprehensible desires. In this space of unveiling, palpable emotions and experiences, the objects cease to exist. Forever shifting, sliding, slipping. Actions that have no end, processes of no return, leaving behind a porous and empty body. Space can be approached, but time is far away.

Making process

The material for the sculpture is based upon the production process of candy making: In which the dissolution of household sugar in water takes place. The solution is boiled until it reaches the desired concentration, in this case about 160 degrees Celsius called Hard Crack. This procedure develops a soft and smooth texture of the syrup. During the cooling process, the mass turns into solid matter. Using a layering technique, the mass then gets poured into a self-formed mould which is laid on the ground. The layering process takes several days to build up towards a 3-dimensional shape and is characterised by a porous and brittle structure through the ongoing transformation of the material.

This ongoing conversation with the material itself is a form to invite vitality, and chaos into the work and explore the transition between materiality and immateriality using techniques of manipulation, transmission and modification.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.

Ingredients

Sucrose (C12H22O11).

Physical samples

  • 131-1

Accessible to participants at the Jan van Eyck Academie and on appointment.