As a result of the 19th edition of the Ermanno Casoli prize, granted by the Ermanno Casoli Foundation (Fabriano, Italy), I developed a permanent artwork at the premises of the ElicaMex factory in Querétaro, Mexico, a company specialized in the manufacturing of kitchen hoods. Here I present an extract of the text written by Francesco Pedraglio and Marcello Smarrelli for the publication edited on the occasion of the work:
... After being invited to reflect upon the peculiarities of the industrial production happening within ElicaMex, Jorge Satorre immediately focused his attention on the potential presence of any subjective imprint left on the highly standardized products the workers help to create; Pelusa (fluff), as he called it: an involuntary and yet unavoidable personal residue that, as much as we try to eradicate it, keeps showing up. This way, the result of Satorre’s research can be understood as a chain of works that emerged from this tension between personal expression and rule, between instinct and quality control, between subjective proposal and standard of functionality.
The work started with a series of visits to ElicaMex’s headquarters in Querétaro. After familiarizing himself with the different areas and departments of the plant, Satorre became interested in a specific space, a room employees simply referred to as “the dark room.” This is in fact a storage room where all the molds, cutters, and masks that could no longer be used to slash and bend the steel sheets are organized and stored. Despite its value, this equipment is now unusable due to wear and tear, faster production speed, as well as changes in design demands. Fascinated by such a collection of precious yet useless objects, Satorre worked on a series of 19 unique drawings depicting a selection of the machinery stored inside the “dark room.” The artist often chose what to draw based on the history related to the obsolescence of the tools, their physical appearance, their colour, their shape. The slow, painstaking process of measuring each piece of machinery—part by part, section by section—just to then render and scale it back onto the paper allowed the artist to establish a new relationship with each object. Using a cavalier perspective to represent each object, a procedure widely used in technical drawing, he not only created and documented a personal archive of the superfluous; he also showed how, right within the heart of a highly functional and productive environment, there is still space for interruptions.
Following the drawing sessions, the artist decided to use scrap-metal plates from the hoods’ manufacturing process to transform the sketches into a series of 19 engravings. The prints bear the marks of their provenance, incorporating registration holes and imprints from the discarded metal. The clash between their hypothetical precision (they are technical sketches of existing pieces of machinery, after all) and their actual unsuitability for practical use (the drawings could not be used to truly replicate the machines) creates a margin where the highly regulated and the purely instinctual can coexist.
As a continuation of the work, Satorre also produced four metal sculptures. These structures are fully integrated and intentionally difficult to distinguish from other functional elements inside the factory. Together with the prints, they are distributed in the area where Satorre spent most of his time making the drawings. The sculptures were produced with Elica’s metal workers and engineers. Each one is imagined as a replica or redesign of certain structures of practical use already present in the plant—constructions such as staircases, fences, and poles that were at one point installed to try to solve issues that emerged once the machines were already set in place. As with the registration holes and outlines of the engraving plates, Satorre considers these structures as a condensation of the lengthy historical process behind many ornamental motifs; they might as well be formal residues of past functional qualities.
The only anomaly that might give away the sculptural nature of the four structures is the eerie presence of clusters of folded paper attached to each one of them. These elements are the outcomes of a specific activity promoted in the factory thanks to the World Class Manufacturing system. Introduced in the plant in 2009, the WCM is a program based on continuous improvement that involves the elimination of all types of waste and losses of time and materials through strict commitment to standards. An integral part of the WCM is a so-called “system of suggestions” that offers workers the chance to contribute to the development of the production system by submitting potential improvements to the work environment, to the production methods, or to the operation of machinery. The suggestions are made through a mixture of sketches and text and, if the proposal is accepted, the workers are rewarded with points that can be exchanged for a variety of domestic products. Specifically, the folded suggestions that Satorre attached to the sculptures are all the ones that, since he started his collaboration with Elica in 2019, the company has considered not viable. The plan is to keep accumulating them until the sculptures are totally covered.
19 engravings using soft varnish on metal plate, printed on 44g Katazomegenshi paper, and hung using steel burrs and magnets.
21 x 27.5 cm each.
Edition of 19 + 1 ap.
Produced by Ermanno Casoli Foundation and Elicamex.
With the production assistance of Mayte Domínguez, Domenico Monsignore, Alfredo Galaviz, Shoaib Golra, BCD Group, José Manuel Suárez, César Vega, Marcos Espino, Carlos Ramos, Marco Vargas, César Lagunes and Arturo Godínez.