Surficial Geology of Madrid: Anthropic Rock Formation Relies on Cycling Material in Urban Environments
Aubrie James and Cristóbal García Belmont
Espacio Enredo, Madrid
May 1 – June 1, 2025
The exhibition Surficial Geology of Madrid: Anthropic Rock Formation Relies on Cycling Material in Urban Environments presents a series of sound installations, sculptures, works on paper, and textiles by artists Aubrie James (SMACT ’24) and Cristóbal García Belmont (SMACT ’23). The exhibition will be on view from May 1 to June 1, 2025. Parting from the analysis of diverse types of rock formations and the recognition of anthropic rock as a material reality produced by urban environments—embedded in its own temporal cycle within a geological framework—this exhibition presents itself as an anabranch: a deviation within the flow of this cycle. It diverts a portion of the material stream, exposing it to the artists’ temporal and material transformations.
Aubrie James (1989) is an artist and scientist who uses her extensive training in ecology to probe systems of knowing — scientific, artistic, and otherwise. Her wide-ranging art practice intervenes on scientific convention to theorize ecology as an interactive practice of co-constructing internal (psychic) and external (material, organismic) landscapes. She lives and works in Queens, New York. She is a beautiful butterfly.
Cristóbal García Belmont (1996) explores processes of listening via performance, sculpture, and poetry as they investigate the circulation of mediums and materials in postcolonial realities. By examining sound as a political phenomenon and considering sonic and sculptural elements on an architectural scale, his work interrogates the repercussions of resonance and its relation to visual language. Cristóbal’s practice appropriates infrastructures and spaces where bodies and objects resonate, provoking questions about inherited power dynamics and proposing alternate ways of experiencing our surroundings. He lives and works in Madrid, Spain, and is the Founding Director of Espacio Enredo. He is a beautiful butterfly.