The idea for this work came from reading that Antoni Tàpies wanted his sock to speak about the importance of small things. I decided to take that thought to its limit: to make Tàpies’s sock as small as it was possible to fabricate. The aim was not simply to reduce its size, but to give a physical presence to something almost beyond sight.
In 1991 Tàpies had proposed an eighteen-metre-high sock for the MNAC, a project that was never realised. In 2010 a 2.85-metre version was installed at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Using the two sizes as points in a temporal sequence, I extrapolated the reduction to a hypothetical disappearance in May 2013. The microscopic sock measures 21 × 19 × 23 micrometres: the size it would have reached approximately two hours before becoming zero.
To produce it I prepared a three-dimensional model, which was fabricated using a Nanoscribe machine in collaboration with the Institut de Microelectrònica de Barcelona (IMB-CNM, CSIC), in Bellaterra. The resulting micro-sculpture was deposited right beside Tàpies’s sock at his foundation, during the group exhibition Factotum (2013–2014), featuring artists in residence at Hangar.
Before placing the micro-sculpture beside Tàpies’s Mitjó, I received it on a wafer and photographed it between my fingers. I then scratched the surface to detach the microscopic sock, and we deposited it directly beside the original sculpture. The photograph thus records the last moment when we could still locate it on a support.
There, an almost invisible object coexisted with a monumental sculpture. The microscopic sock may still be in the same place, although I have not verified its current presence. Its possible loss — or continued existence — is part of the work.
