Phantom Columns

Aluminum, wood, shell and seed necklaces

2026

Produced by MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain

Nicolas Aguirre draws from personal mythologies and anthropological references to create works conceived as passageways, between matter and belief, the visible and the invisible. His practice explores the capacity of forms to become active presences, imbued with soul, protection, and transformation.

The Phantom Columns series finds its origin in the symbolism of the San Pedro cactus, planted on the day of the artist’s birth in Quito, Ecuador. Having become a silent guardian, this cactus evokes an Andean tradition in which it acts as a mediator between worlds, used in rituals related to healing, protection, and the expansion of perception. This boundary-plant here becomes a sculptural archetype.

Cast in sand-molded aluminum and wood, marked by fungi and adorned with shell and seed necklaces, the Phantom Columns stand as apotropaic totems (warding off misfortune). The making process, rooted in sand modeling and negative space, transforms the act of sculpting into a ritual gesture, where form emerges in an in-between space, between intention and apparition.

These sculptures incorporate references to Valdivia culture, a pre-Columbian civilization of present-day Ecuador, evoking a primordial feminine principle linked to fertility and life cycles. Envisioned as presences rather than objects, the Phantom Columns engage in dialogue with the exhibition space, affirming the artist’s conviction that the soul precedes form, and that sculpture is, above all, a site of translation and transformation.

Caroline Chabrand