Installations for Madrid Roca Gallery, Lisboa Roca Gallery and Roca Marseille

Roca Galleries are places of encounter and culture, generous, made with the heart.

-We first decided to make it visible in the large black background of the Madrid window. We were literal proposing a calmly beating, monumental, huge, human heart made of ceramics, of course.

This heart is almost 4m high and consists of 3248 pieces of porcelain hangers supported by a metal structure and a plywood substructure.

The main challenge of the project was to really make the heart of existing pieces. We plunged in Roca catalog seeking for the perfect pieces and we found this modest hangers, designed in the seventies that accomplished all the necessities required to cover an irregular complex surface.

Onda hangers are, in our opinion, a classic to vindicate and give them a new life, sophisticated and almost not recognizable. And it is grateful the gift that we got from them: an exceptional sculpture made out of 3248 small white polished pieces.

Inside, the heart is a high structure composed by a metallic basement, pole and cantilevers. Those elements support a secondary plywood substructure, reproducing the surface of an anatomic heart. Led stripes make it beat at a calm, sure and deliberate rhythm.

In the ground, around the heart there is a black, soft pavement, composed by small foam shavings. Walking around it is an odd and pleasant experience.

-In Lisbon we had to deal with an eclectic historical building in the center of the city and we had to find ways and materials to act free from columns, moldings and balusters.

Our intervention is made of pixelated sections of physical hearts. The overlapping of the methacrylate sections in the short spaces of the balconies, its reflection and depth made them appear day and night with its rythmic beat. A neon heart symbol unified the natural and abstract representation.

-Marseille intervention reproduces the Galleries spirit in the context of an ordinary bathrooms showroom. To create a special atmosphere walls and ceiling were painted in black and the ground was covered with the tiles used in Madrid’s Gallery.

The intricate geometry of the room was perpendicularly covered with grey transparent sheets of methacrylate acting as a second skin. Inside the Roca elements shined under spot lights.