Juan BOTELLA LUCAS: 70% Water 99% Sponge

Spanish Sculpture Juan Botella Lucas' solo show "99% Sponge 70%Water " will continue until the 28th February 2009 at Pi Artworks Tophane. The essential exhibition themes are: life and death, movement and immobility, beginnings and endings, sound and silence, war and games against boredom.

Juan Botella Lucas is born in Madrid in 1970, graduated from Madrid UCM Fine Arts Academy, Sculpture Department in 1995. He has been honored by "Meister Schuler" award by Berlin Fine Arts Academy in 1999. Juan Botella Lucas is living and working in Turkey since 1998 and he is currently a lecturer in Mersin University, Sculpture Department. He has been represented by Pi Artworks since 2007. His first Pi Artworks exhibition “ Bailes de mente II ” in 2008 showed Juan’s the brutal simplicity of the concept “life and death”. Other selected exhibitions by Juan Botella Lucas are: Death=Death curated by Levent Çalıkoğlu in 2001, 10th Istanbul Biennial under Hafriyat Group, 22th Mediterranean Biennial in Alexandria, Egypt in 2003. 

“70% Water 99% Sponge” by Juan Botella Lucas has 28 three dimensional works of focets, fountains, graves, mouths, ovaries and other compositions. 
Exhibition takes place in both of pi artworks’ gallery spaces. In the first gallery the presented theme is water; fountains, faucets and pipes. Here, Juan specially focuses on the ancient Ottoman focets. In the second gallery besides fountains, graves (Ottoman and snake graves), anatomic details (teeth, mouths, dog nose, ovary,...) are exhibited.

Juan plays around the irony of “lack of water” and “the global fear of being left under water”. “ ... In the exhibition I present the works made by 99% sponge to the humans bearing 70% water. The fountains bring people together. Fountains offer water to us, and in away we give the water back to them by spitting, crying and in many other forms... ” the artist states.


The exhibition 70% Water 99% Sponge finds life around the same concept as Juan Botella Lucas’ earlier shows. Continual change, slow, then a sudden change, then becoming indifferent, Its about cycles, continuity and change. Exhibition will continue until 28 Februray 2009 in Gallery 1 and 2. Pi Artworks is closed on Sundays. Gallery hours are 10.30 - 19.30 or by appointment.