HARD WATER

NICOLO’ LUCCHI

This phenomenon, distinctive of the Lessinia region and not only, starts when rainwater flows on the soil absorbing carbon dioxide and starts to chemically dissolve limestone when contact is made. This fascinating process is not merely about dissolution but also about the actual construction of new rocks. This is because water, rich in calcium hydrogen carbonate, leaking into underground caves, starts to drop and makes the calcium carbonate sink freed from the carbon dioxide, an event which gives life to stalactites and stalagmites.

It happens naturally that an element generates itself the cause of its exhaustion.
Fascinated by the processes of destruction and creation, through the medium of photography, I created a container for the many shapes in which water – undoubtedly the protagonist of my work – can transform itself and what is around it.
My idea materialises in the production of an image created by nature itself.

I wanted the natural elements to lead the way, whilst I was waiting on the side for the formation of an image born from an infinite process. 

My installation is a “temporary” sculpture constituted by a lace of karst rocks tied to the roof. On its top, I have placed a bottle containing water with an acidic pH dripping onto it. The water makes use of gravity in order to run through the rocks’ lace and dissolving their surfaces with its acidity. As in the geological process of karst, the water carries with it the materials absorbed in its path and ends on the photographic paper placed below the installation. This black photographic paper is the result of its exposure to the light of a cave in Velo Veronese. This paper becomes the container of the residual materials that water has dissolved in its path through the sculpture’s rocks rich in calcium carbonate. These remains will then become solid once the water will have evaporated and will leave a permanent mark on the paper. What will be left in the end will be a drawing made by water and calcium carbonate documenting the whole process of erosion. 

On the sculpture’s sides, I have placed photographs that document the mutation of water within the region of Lessinia.

Time moves slow through these geological processes and water, in its various states, carries with it the memory of this mutating place.