Exhibition text for Hugo Cantegrel
Las Palmas
Lisbon, Portugal
2018
Roger Caillois, L’écriture des pierres, Paris, Editions Flammarion (collection Champs), 1994, p. 91.
No imposed direction and the meaning you wish to give it; the artist draws a horizon of expectation. Among the intermingling of narrative potentials, the multitude of entry points, the assumed or hidden references, he invites us to choose a thread and to weave new links. Unless, at the sight of Icarus - who died for having flown too close to the Sun - we prefer to lose ourselves in a maze of symbols.
Hieratic writings punctuate the space. Dreamlike traces of hills, snapshots of waves, imprints of memories. The fragility of the material and the softness of the tones of these ceramic landscapes give the effect of a caress. Breathing. The exhibition becomes an embrace and the work an object of tenderness. Human warmth, setting sun. In the heart of the room, a theatre without voices: horsemen whisper their presence. Silence in three parts. The dunces seem ready for a sneak attack, but they will soon be put in check. The game has been carved out of red cedar, still wet, so that the very act of making it doomed it to destruction. Soon, the observation of the knots will be followed by that of the debris. Already the silence has been broken: the cracking of the puzzle is beginning to be heard.
Or perhaps it is rather the rustling of the Dream Airlines that can be heard in the distance. Inspiration. The motifs in this collection of silkscreens on survival blankets encourage us to look up more often, to think about the strange poetics of what surrounds us: the apparent silence of a control tower, the choreography of a light, the hairstyle of a palm tree. Here, we can no longer really distinguish the reverse from the right side. The cover has become a support and its layout can show both sides. Wandering golden nobility on a pink background.
The shimmer of a red neon light reveals the black sun. Reflection. Rescuing Icarus in times of eclipse? It is enough to turn around the sun to understand how much this astral oxymoron illuminates the equivocation of human nature. The triangular metal structure, which turns around, evokes a hot stamping iron. But the seal will only leave traces in our minds, as an image-symbol of a precarious balance, of a chaos-world. We listen to the rumbling of a lightning bolt. We touch the heart. Black sun, white page. In a corner, a mineral form appears, partially covered by a square of gold, an almost spiritual construction of a still unknown religion. Expiration. The cornerstone of an uneventful narrative, both ruin and foundation, it leads us permanently astray into an archaeology of untouchable artefacts.