Damien Ortega Glucose/Cola work

In 2002 Damián Ortega collaborated with Italian glassblowers to make alterations to 120 Coca Cola Bottles. Entitled “120 Days”—in reference both to the de Sade novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” and to the film Salò—this artwork follows the logic of the package-as-body metaphor to it logical (sadistic) conclusion.

“The idea of the Coke, the disorder produces fun but also some strange feeling, like something is wrong. ‘This Coca-Cola is so weird. Something’s wrong with them.’ It’s like the birds in the Hitchcock film, no? It’s like, hmm. Who are we? What are we doing? What are we thinking? What is our own relationship with the objects within society or the context.”

From Greg Cook’s Interview with Damian Ortega

“Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” (an installation composed of bottle-caps strung on steel, loosely based on the glucose molecule)

In “Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” Ortega used bottle caps to make a giant hanging glucose molecule. (Coincidentally alluding to that secret ingredient that has recently set Mexican Coke apart in the minds of some consumers—namely: sugar.)

“Molécula de glucose expandida is a work that deals with the consumption of sugar in Mexico as a collective and cultural phenomenon. It is exhibited as a molecule formed by particles that are soda bottlecaps collected from stores and restaurants in Mexico City. I enlarged the molecule to a huge size. It is a rhizome hanging from the ceiling, growing and expanding in the space like an alien. This work can be grasped from the inside or from the outside. It is a chemical structure, but also a social one: micro and macro.”

–Damián Ortega from Champ de Vision, Damián Ortega Part 2
by Anna Hiddleston and Sinziana Ravini