Selected work

Blown tire

A blown tire that, after ceasing to function, continues to accumulate kilometres.

Year2017–2022

MaterialsTire and wooden pole

DimensionsVariable dimensions

PhotographsRoberto Ruiz

ExhibitionsAir de..., ADN Galeria, Barcelona, 2022–2023 · Apories sobre l’aire, Bòlit, Girona, 2024

Curated byOlga Subirós and Ingrid Guardiola (Bòlit)

LinksInstagram, Arizona, 2017 ↗ · ADN Galeria ↗ · Bòlit ↗

I found this blown tire in 2017 on the shoulder of a road in Arizona. It was clear that it had burst very close to where I found it and that, after many kilometres in motion, it had been abandoned there. I do not know exactly why I put it in the trunk of my car.

Later I moved it to North Carolina, then New York, Amsterdam and finally Barcelona. Each time it travelled inside a plastic box, by car or by plane. I became interested in the paradox of all these new kilometres made by a tire that could no longer perform its function.

The question remains very simple: did this tire travel more kilometres before I found it, or afterwards?

The work’s journey

1. Arizona · 2017

The roadside photograph is the first document of the project. I posted it on Instagram at the time I found the tire, preserving the moment when it stopped being simply an abandoned object and began a second trajectory.

Arizona, 2017 · view the original Instagram post ↗

2. A second life in kilometres

The tire could no longer roll, yet it kept travelling. Its later route —Arizona, North Carolina, New York, Amsterdam and Barcelona— reverses its functional logic: the less useful it becomes as a tire, the more kilometres it accumulates as an artwork.

3. Air de... · ADN Galeria, 2022–2023

The work was presented in Air de..., a solo exhibition at ADN Galeria devoted to air and its physical and conceptual properties. In a blown tire, air appears precisely through its absence: the moment the tire stops containing air is also the moment it stops functioning as a tire.

4. Apories sobre l’aire · Bòlit, Girona, 2024

It later formed part of Apories sobre l’aire at Bòlit in Girona, curated by Olga Subirós and Ingrid Guardiola. The exhibition ran from 16 February to 19 May 2024.

On 16 February 2024, Diari de Girona published an interview by Albert Soler, with a photograph by Aniol Resclosa, centred on the work and the exhibition. Its headline —“When we blow, we are left aside, as happened to this tire”— made explicit a personal reading that also belongs to the work.

Diari de Girona, 16.02.2024 · Text: Albert Soler · Photograph: Aniol Resclosa

5. Identification

There is something in this tire that I can identify with. At some point it stopped doing what it had been made to do and was left at the side of the road. But that failure was not the end of its journey. It continued moving, in another way and for other reasons. I am interested in that possibility: that after something breaks, a different trajectory can begin.