Waterways: Eva Lootz

La Casa Encendida presents Waterways, an exhibition designed specifically for the Madrid venue by Austrian artist Eva Lootz. The show includes new site-specific pieces created by Lootz for La Casa Encendida and a significant part of the series from Hydrographies, a project begun in 2005 that revolves around the water and rivers of the Iberian Peninsula.

The series on display explore themes like the historical transformation of river courses, their role in the development of cities, the superimposed layers of place names, the physical features of the territory, hydraulic policies and the dangers of treating water as a marketable commodity, expressed through drawings, panels, videos, light boxes and sculptures.

From a bird's eye view, rivers resemble veins and neurons, and Eva Lootz uses this resemblance as a way of identifying with nature. Yet this is only one of many other possible similes: the river has been a metaphor for life since ancient times, and the comparison of flowing water to passing time has inspired a wide variety of philosophies and myths.

Rivers also have a history, and in them we can read the history of our own town or city and, in fact, of the whole world: their uses and paths, ethics and aesthetics intertwine in the work of Eva Lootz, who has found artistic language to be the best tool for analysing a fundamental, multifaceted subject.