Developed over almost a decade, Matter is the most ambitious work to date by Catalan artist Aleix Plademunt. It takes as its star- ting point the word ‘matter’, derived from mater, Latin for ‘mo- ther’, which refers to the substance of which everything is made. With the project Matter, the artist investigates the very question of existence and sets out in pursuit of our origins. He collaborated with scientific teams in more than 15 countries around the world, including Switzerland, and he produced a corpus of over 600 photographs. Each image hints at the paradox of matter: it is constant and inert, but makes life and its perpetual changes possible. Matter shows how matter is penetrated by history and politics, but also by geology, biology, climate and their slow or brutal evolutions. The images form a heterogeneous and yet precise and coherent ensemble of acute beauty.