These works from the 1980s display some of the typical features of Eva Lootz’s oeuvre. Born in Vienna and settled in Madrid since 1967, she is interested in inverting the usual use of materials and imbuing everyday objects with irony. Thus, in ‘Tres paletas’ a working tool that is supposed to be solid enough to move elements such as sand or water has been reimagined as a weak sheet of brass and waxed felt, thus denying it its supposed function. In ‘Rama’, the artist winds copper wire around a pine branch, preventing its natural growth and defining its shape. And in ‘Untitled’, she refers to her series from the 1980s, ‘Lengua’ (Tongue), in which she used different materials to recreate the image of this viscous muscle that allows us to speak and eat. With a repertoire of basic objects and universal realities, she summons allegorical and symbolic content. As Lootz wrote in her 2007 book, ‘Lo visible es un material inestable’ (The Visible is an Unstable Material): ‘In my case, to be an artist is to experience vulnerability with all its consequences. It is a radical opening to things and to others.’