JOAN FONTCUBERTA - Tubastraea cricoides

Paper: Giclée print on Hahnemühle Museum Fine Art paper
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Edition: 5
Year: 2024
Certificate: Signed and numbered by the artist.

JOAN FONTCUBERTA – Tubastraea cricoides

With Tubastraea cricoides, Fontcuberta once again indulges in his favourite pastime: inventing nature itself. This coral, a plump and almost theatrical organism, looks as if it were designed by evolution after a night of surreal drunkenness. The name – a parody of Latin taxonomy – is reminiscent of the real Tubastraea, a genus of sun corals, but here it is twisted into cricoides, suggesting something circular, cyclical, perhaps absurdly self-referential.

Unlike its real-life counterpart, which blooms shyly in the shadows of the reefs, Tubastraea cricoides appears boldly self-assured. Its fleshy geometry, both comical and sensual, mimics the language of biological precision – only to betray it upon closer inspection. Every pore, every swelling, every luminous tip seems too perfect, too ornamental, too enthusiastic about its own artificiality.

Fontcuberta uses AI here not as a tool of imitation, but of revelation: to expose how easily we accept the false as true when it comes disguised as science. This ‘creature’ does not exist, yet it seduces us into believing that it could exist – precisely the kind of visual lie that Fontcuberta has created throughout his career.

In Tubastraea cricoides, taxonomy becomes theatre and evolution becomes a stage for irony. The coral seems to quietly laugh at our human urge to name, classify and believe – as if to say, ‘Reality is overrated.’