Lucia Nielsen on Y3000w work.
I remember a summer I read Modern Nature by Derek Jarman, nonstop, it was my first introduction to the world of flora. The truth is I had never paid much attention to it, but there was something about it that filled me with extasis. It had an almost demiurgic power over me, with the enslavement that that entailed, I was on the beach and could not go for walks with the book (not only because of its weight), but because I had caught the mania of searching for the plants it named and would make separate albums by month as the plants came up. I began to understand the cycles of nature through it, and what kind of thing may grow at each place.
The diary breaks down moments, perceptions, calls, encounters, feelings, memories and emotions taken to the most vivid detail. It describes the color of seeds, bronze for the dils, the company of a crow during a walk, the butterfly posing on the window while he wrote it. He says: “nature conspires to keep me in a state of permanent perception”. His work takes shape from the present and his context. Marti’s work builds up a similar appreciation. It starts with a stroll, a ritual of selection — appeals from everyday life. Therein, colors, textures, materials and feelings are combined, forming watery images of living color.
“The most beautiful order of things is a sweeping of random things… Everything we see asleep is awake; everything we see awake is dead” says Heraclitus. It is the singing between states that allows us to live together, although it is worth questioning that order. We find ourselves again between the chicken and the egg. Y300w “are microworlds that cross over by chance and coexist”, says Marti. The first image she sent me is called Portal estelar, made on May 16, 2020. In it, a coral-colored sphere appears at the center. It is one of her first experiments, made at night with flashlights and stones from her yard. The second is part of the series Turquoise frequency, made on May 2, 2021, containing petals, iridescent glass and a tin background, its vanishing point is the light. The third image, Conexión delfinicia was captured on May 28, 2020, has grass, some snails and pieces of dreams with whales, of which I myself dreamt while writing this. The fourth image, Crystal arcoíris, made on June 28, 2020 involves crystals, silver and snails. The fifth, Expansión 8.8.8. from August 3, 2020, is made from coral, angels, the songs of whales, among other inspirations.
There is a will to return to matter, to simplicity. It is with an attention to the particular that one arrives to the stellar. We should not forget that every color corresponds to a planet and exerts a particular action on us. “One can really appreciate beings from other dimensions that are transported through the portal of water”, Marti told me. In her images, water is paramount, as it happens on Earth and in the human body. People are made up of 70% water, the Earth is 70% water, Y3000w would seem to have a high percentage of it too. I think of sailors and their legends when I hear Marti make that affirmation. As if hypnotized somehow by the dense matter that is water, capturing it. I think also that the water on Earth is parallel to the sky, which on a sunny day shines like crystals giving place to the sun. And that the night lets glimpses of the stars shine through, or turns deeper and acquires different shades like the gasses that are up there.
I believe that every image functions as a node of energy that catapults the pulsion that takes you away from yourself through its connections or chances and returns you to yourself with something different. I am reminded of the path that memories traverse in a movie from the 2000s, Rewind fast camera, where we begin to see a cascade of lights that follow one another very rapidly until arriving to the moment they click with the present, making us smile and sometimes reminding us to change directions.
