Suspended Times
Dzialdov, Berlin
11 March - 02 April 2023
We died of Anxiety
‘cos they threatened us with Darkness
as if it would even exist
(excerpt form Eclisse, 2023)
The exhibition Suspended Times deals with loss, deterioration and becoming, related to both the emotional and material landscape. Moving through the exhibition among fragments of poetry, broken marble, copper pipes, paintings based on concrete and droning sounds, the artist invites the viewer to enter a liminal zone of alienation offering a mirror to our times.
Natura Morta con Eclisse, detail, 2023
Natura Morta con Eclisse, installation detail at Dzialdov, Berlin, 2023
video by Nicolas Rupcich
Natura Morta con Eclisse, installation detail, 2023
Suspended Times, installation detail, 2023
Suspended Times, installation detail, 2023
Natura Morta con Eclisse, installation detail, 2023
Kaputt Mundi, concrete, pigments on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, installation detail, 2023
The exhibition develops from the poem titled “Eclisse” composed assembling fragments of poetries written by the artist. The text acts as a narrative voice looking at the past and elaborating on the human experience and its existential struggle. Displayed in printed form on wall, the text spreads to the walls as ghostly appearances (details below).
The installation “Natura Morta con Eclisse” includes broken pieces marble and granite floating on coins, image cut-ups and photos, dried flowers and fruit placed on a rubber surface. These fragments of marble, a material commonly regarded as valuable, are discarded pieces that were meant to be crushed and mixed with asphalt and gravel to build the roads we walk on everyday. The stones are here placed on top of coins to reference the ancient practice of placing coins in the mouth of a dead person before burial, so that their soul could pay to be carried in the world of the dead. Different elements of this installation reference a state of becoming. The artist is interested in the liminal state of in-betweenness, both in relation to the material state and to the self.
Suspended Times, Dzialdov, Berlin, 2023
video by Nicolas Rupcich
Left on wall: Per Aspera ad Aspera, concrete, pastels on canvas, 18 x 24 cm, 2023 - Santo Niente, paper cut-up, 40 x 50 cm, 2003
Right on wall: Inferno 4, concrete, collage, pastels, acrylic paint on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, 2020
Center on floor: Natura Morta con Eclisse, marble and granite debris, dried flowers, pomegranate, image cut-up, inkjet prints, 2023
Center on wall: Kaputt Mundi, concrete, pigments, pastels on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, 2019
Eclisse, poem, inkjet print on 160 gr paper and engravings on walls, installation view, 2023
Eclisse, poem, inkjet print on 160 gr paper and engravings on walls, installation view, 2023
Following the interest for both the constructing and deteriorating characteristics of concrete, in reference to the urban environment, since years the artist has been using this material as a medium for creating paintings. These works are based on multiple layers of matter, built up through many stages of constructing and deconstructing. A practice built on the accumulation of time, material and history that the fragments carry with them in the process of becoming part of something else.
Inferno 4, detail
Inferno 4, concrete, collage, pastels, acrylic paint on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, 2020
Per Aspera ad Aspera, concrete, pastels on canvas, 18 x 24 cm, 2023
Santo Niente, paper cut-up, 40 x 50 cm, 2003
The second environment touches on feelings of contemplation and the unknown.
Two copper pipes come out of the walls, hung from the ceiling at a hight just above average person height, facing each other and leaving a gap of about a meter in between them. On one side of the pipes, appears a small painting made of quarzsand on the wall, while on the other side a subwoofer sits on the floor.
Pipes are objects that inhabit our urban environment as if they were essential anatomical organs of a vast body, laying outside of our direct field of interaction. The omnipresence of these objects in our visual landscape is enigmatic: what runs inside them? What lies in these voids? As the pipes take the stage in the middle of the room, facing each other, a tension between them reveals a space governed by absence, leaving us with an open question.
The copper material that constitutes these objects, with its characteristic of naturally changing chemical structure and color under the agency of oxygen and weather, reference a state of natural ongoing transformation. Like the marble fragments, these objects were also in the process of being discarded, leaving them in a state in-between material worth and worthlessness.
Resonant Archives, installation view, 2023
Resonant Archives, installation view, copper pipes, 200 x 10 cm each, 2023
On wall: I Walk Through My Days Lighthearted and Carefree Knowing Everything is Well, quarz sand on canvas, 30 x 40 cm, 2023
Resonant Archives, installation view, 2023
All the works in the exhibition are held together by the soundscape Untitled Sequence in D. This work is composed by looping a D note, whose frequency is said to reverberate with the one of the heart. Played through a subwoofer, the frequencies enhance the interaction with the human body and is felt as a physical presence. In contrast to the experience of deterioration that comes through the other works in the exhibition, the sound piece offers a non-visible vehicle to presence and present time, life.
Eclisse, artist booklet, 10 x 15 cm, 2023
As part of the exhibition, the artist self-published an exhibition concept booklet titled after the poem Eclisse (2023). This work includes the poem, pictures present on the installation Natura Morta con Eclisse and fragments of marble and granit present in the installation. The booklet is printed in an edition of 40 copies, one fragment for each year of the artist life to the exhibition date.