The Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias is making a work of public art featuring water for a park in Santander, northern Spain. Part of her work will appear to flow under the Renzo Piano-designed Centro Botín arts venue, which is being built on the city’s waterfront. Installing the work in the park and testing its computer-controlled flow of water is due to begin, says Benjamin Weil, the artistic director of the Centro Botín. The ambitious commission will be unveiled when the €77m centre opens, which could be next year or 2017, Weil says.
Iglesias’s site-specific piece refers to the fact that the whole site used to be under the sea. It is landfill, with the original shoreline 200 to 300 metres inland, Weil says. “[The work] is going to refer to the bottom of the sea, the rhythm of the tides and algae,” he says.
The artist’s solo show at Marian Goodman Gallery in London (Phreatic Zones, until 19 December) provides a glimpse of the monumental work. She is showing a silkscreen based on studies for the Santander commission as well as a new indoor water sculpture in three pieces.
The first permanent commission by the Centro Botín, Iglesias’s exposed “sea bed” will then be protected until the centre opens. “We are still hoping for next year but it is a very complicated building. Because it is exposed to the weather and Santander’s storms, everything has to be three times as strong,” Weil says. Meanwhile, Carsten Höller’s temporary intervention forms an overture to the Belgian artist’s inaugural show. “The [park’s] light system starts to flicker for three minutes every hour,” Weil says. “It’s magical.”
