The Breathtaking Beauty of Nature: Deep, Dark & Still, The Sea As The Origin of Life

When William Blake wrote the immortal words “To see the world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour,” he meant for them to stand true for all time to come. Some two hundred years later, Blake’s very thought that everything is connected, and all is one – magically caught and deeply embraced by Madrid-based artist Ruth Peche – has taken root in Deep Entropy the artist’s breathtakingly beautiful suite of underwater artworks organized and curated by HUMA3 at the Fundacion Pons in Madrid.

Peche, a bit of a scientist in her approach, sees nature as “the greatest source of creativity.” In her earlier work, she systematically explored the ever-changing structures and patterns of nature and its god-like effect on rock formation, trees, and leaves – all of which play a much larger part in our everyday lives than we give credit to. Deep Entropy, comprised of light boxes, manipulated photographs, and an otherworldly undersea video, is the most emotionally affecting of her various series. Here, the artist, playing with the same patterns and structures found in nature, returns us to the sea, the origin of life on earth. 

Peche’s underwater inspired journey, from first thoughts to final works, was a long, hard haul. It begins with Peche, Fuji Fine Fix camera in hand, diving into the sea to photograph living aquatic forms whose vivid shapes and textures appeal to her sensibilities. Then, material in hand, returning to her studio computer to feverishly manipulate her initial photographs to produce – after much digital cutting and pasting, adding and subtracting – a series of newly minted works, astonishing in their originality.

Situated on two floors, Deep Entropy begins on the lower level with an underwater video-sound installation showing the bottom of the sea. Here we are treated to highly atmospheric undersea shots filmed off the coast of Menorca, the Red Sea in Israel, and Dubrovnik, Croatia, all favorite haunts of the artist. The rooms that follow are dedicated to Peche’s lDibond printed undersea images. In the poetic Anemone 2 (2010), we are invited to participate in what seems to be a private dialogue between two beautiful and delicate sea-flora. In Deep 6 (2009-12) Peche, playing with the movement of the sand and waves, has created her version of the bottom of the sea, capturing what Zen philosophy describes as the sense of “what is above is below”.

The gallery’s second floor holds seven light boxes presented in a dimly lit room accompanied by the sound of the sea, effects specifically designed by Huma3 to create an undersea experience akin to the artist’s own diving adventures. The light boxes magnify a different seabed creature placed against a black background, each one more arrestingly beautiful than the one before.

What separates Peche’s images from the mundane is her architectural eye and her finesse for the computer. Her ability to create atmosphere, the illusion of depth, and the actual feel of water in what is essentially two-dimensional work, most evident in her seabed works, is uncanny. Another of the artist’s trademarks is her effective use of minimal color, as well as the color black, both of which the artist uses in tandem to bring her subjects front and center and alive. The “sitters” in her anemone and coral portraits, just as she found them on the floor of the sea radiate life; such is the spell that Peche weaves into her work.