Small multicolored spots float in the sea, appearing on the sand and in rocky areas; marine animals and birds accidentally ingest them. This seductive material, with its versatile and durable qualities, embodies the contradictions of our time; these are fragments of plastic products.

The forces of nature—tides, ultraviolet light, and the morphology of the seas—degrade the plastic products we discard—bottles, bags, containers, toys—turning them into fragments, small pieces that eventually become particles.

What are those floating spots? is a symphony of materialities that links complex realities, tensions between the seduction of the material, different facets of human creation, and an environmental problem that is growing and making us all sick. This is why, in this work suspended between the boundaries of painting and installation, I incorporate plastic waste as a pictorial and spatial construction of fragments. A painting that becomes a disturbing multicolored spatial reality, while at the same time, a reality that becomes a pictorial work.

What are those floating spots? is born from the question that gives the work its title, from curiosity about the environment, referring, on the one hand, to the history of painting as a space for recording its time and context; a place of study and abstraction that engages our gaze to invite contemplation of our problems and realities. On the other hand, it is a contemporary space of experimentation, where I approach painting as a pictorial construction, organizing planes of color in bi- and three-dimensional space, to create a visual journey and experience through color.

Asking myself What are those floating spots? and delving into this project, which is more than a work but a journey of reflections, led me to discover the impact of microplastics. In 2022, the United Nations revealed that nearly eleven million tons of plastic are discarded into the oceans each year. They warned that if no action is taken, by 2050, there will be around 12,000 million tons of plastic waste spread across landfills and the ocean. It is urgent to raise awareness about the impact of this material on the oceans.

Since the appearance of plastic in the global economy, this material has been silently invading the planet’s oceans and beaches, reaching unimaginable levels today. This material has even formed large islands in the middle of the oceans that concentrate thousands of tons of plastic and is present all over the planet.