Curator Tiago de Abreu Pinto developed this proposal during the Summer 2012 Curatorial Intensive in New York. The proposal eventually became the exhibition Guillermo Mora, Sean Edwards, and Marcellus L. at Noestudio from October 20-December 2012.
This dialogue is fine but a decision is always an alone act. Concepts are never perfect, complete or exhausted. I want to make that fleeting moment permanent somehow. “Your errors are your key.” She made me believe in not linear projects, in parallel or secondary structures, in error and failure as a starting point. Sorry I've just realized I’m thinking about a different work.
This exhibition emerged from long distance dialogues – both oral and written, developed in 2012 – between the artists Sean Edwards and Guillermo Mora, and the curator. Only one of its works, Toga (2011), by Marcellvs L., existed prior to the project, and is the central hub of the exhibition at Noestudio.
Each conversation was recorded to create a digital memory in addition to the natural memory of its participants, because human memories are constantly changing in subtle ways. “Recently neurophysiological studies have shown that every time the brain accesses synapse it is altered, which seems to confirm that there are no permanently fixed traces in the brain.” Memory is subjective and it is not mechanical reproduction as many people believe today. What we see, hear, and feel are inventions of our brains. “Colors don’t exist, they are human inventions.”1
The first point of contact for visitors is the color vibration that each work emits. In the specific case of the video, Toga, there is a tireless movement that generates new colors. The video, with its sculptural physicality, presents (in a decontextualized way) a large fishing net at the port of Reykjavík, being hauled off a boat that was out at sea for months. The works of Edwards and Mora were nourished by the junction between this colorful engine, the dialogues between them, and the characteristics of the exhibition space.
Mora hung Between you and me (2012) on the ceiling. The work consists of a 200m line of entangled canvas stretchers that create an abstract body that scans the unstable space from its upper position. Edwards’ work gives rhythm to the exhibition making each object on the shelf that bisects Noestudio a reference to the oral and written dialogues between the participants. These works deal with gravity and its relation with the ground, destabilizing the notion of balance. The encounter, understood fully, is the raw material of the three artists and the assembled stage for this encounter doesn’t present fixed, immutable or fossilized forms––apart from the work's physicality.
The artworks, microcosms in themselves, together create a platform that serves as a source of nutrition for the spectator; restless mechanisms that continue seeking; constructing and producing inside of each one of us the uncomfortable sensation which is the impossibility of understanding the reality in its completeness. The future publication and this exhibition aim to bring the viewer, the artists, and their artworks closer together.
Footnotes
1. Conversation with Israel Rosenfield about the artworks of this exhibition and his new studies on the brain and the memory.
Learn More
To learn more about this proposal please email Tiago de Abreu Pinto at tiagodeabreu@gmail.com. To learn more about the Curatorial Intensive email info@curatorsintl.org.
