Hierve el Agua

"Can we still sense the Sublime?

A journey in search of this feeling brought me to Mexico.

A journey born of the urge to understand where it dwells, and whether it is still possible to feel it. In the comfort of our apartments, of efficient cities, of the multifunctional rhythm to which life keeps time,  the idea of the Sublime remained for me consecrated to Romanticism. In paintings, in books. A museum horde of terrible wonders. Something too distant to be grasped in its full magnitude today.

And yet I knew I had felt it. In some echoing silence on the summit of a mountain, facing the precipice. On some night when the water, too deep, seemed a boundless black mire. I thought of Mexico as a place whose spirit still dwells in the forces of nature. I packed a bag scant of everything, and left.

From this journey many of the subjects of recent years were born.

Among them, Hierve el Agua.

The water boils.

An enchanted place, marked by an aquatic time.

From below, water takes shape, welling up to create mountains, lofty variegated tongues, natural and soothing basins to sink into.

Not only the immensity of space, but that of time.

Is it not water, the matter that most binds and tears apart?

Is it not water we are made of?"–Jessica Rimondi

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Jessica Rimondi (b. 1987, Turin) is an Italian artist based in Berlin.

Matter itself is the main subject of her research, and her way of understanding the world. It determines how cultures recognise their origins, how cities grow, which arts and ways of thinking emerge. Geopolitics, too, is shaped by it. Across mixed media painting, sculpture and sound installation, she treats it as a living, transformative and conductive presence and as an archive of cultural and social value.

Her work grows out of cooperation with natural and material elements, and from learning how each responds to touch, to fire, to changes of state. Sulphur from the island of Vulcano becomes pigment; lava casts from Sicily turn into iridescent glass, caught in their molten state; plants and fragments of landscape become porcelain. In her sound installations, heard through bone conduction, the listener’s own body becomes part of the work. Together they trace a journey through genesis and transience, environmental memory and a rediscovery of the forces of nature.

Jessica Rimondi graduated in painting from the Accademia Albertina in Turin and in Mixed Media Fine Art from the University of Westminster in London. Since 2017 she has developed interdisciplinary projects with composers, among them Zwischen Kosmos, produced for In Vitrø as part of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019. In 2021 she created Erbe des Ortes, a project on landscapes as carriers of collective memory, funded by Amcha Deutschland e.V.

Her awards include the Arte Laguna Prize, the Graduate Art Prize, Premio Ora, the T.I.N.A. Prize, In Glorious Colour (Saatchi Art) and ArtLab Munich. She was selected for the Travers Smith CSR Art Programme and was artist in residence at the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, where she later served on the selection jury.

Her work has been shown in London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Venice, Vienna and Munich, including the LA Art Show with Simard Bilodeau Contemporary and solo exhibitions at Space Station Gallery, London (2017), and Herr Beinlich Gallery, Bielefeld (2014).

Recent presentations include Berlin Art Week 2024, the Glass Annual Conference 2024, the International Glass Biennale 2025 at the National Gallery Kvadrat 500 in Sofia, the Venice Design Biennial 2025 at SPARC Gallery, and Decade for Dialogue, a group exhibition by Pilote Contemporary at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, in 2026.

Hand-pulled screen prints on Murano glass / Handgefertigte Siebdrucke auf Muranoglas, 2026

Details

Detail 1/2, 21 x 30 cm

€ 600,00 (incl. VAT, unframed / inkl. MwSt., ungerahmt)

plus shipping costs

Also available are Editions of 5 & Artist Prints (4 pieces)

© Jessica Rimondi