Self-reflective
Diego Delas
2021
CentroCentro Cibeles
We enter into the horn-shaped space, we progress through the fresh-painted dissected cabinet of wonders and lick with imaginary tongues into those surfaces. We dreamed of long-haired retinas to harness corners and pillars, walls and lighting in a soft embrace. The sort of embrace kids deploy when bringing things into their mouths, to see with the wide watery pond of a licking open infant mouth: now this open one-eye listens colours and cascades motionless into artworks.
As we slowly slip into the exhibition, into this tale of pulsating surfaces – clothed in colour and, devoid of touch – we dream of closeness, we dream of grasping claws, nails rubbing and pen-knife written names on walls. We feel like phantoms gliding through a mistakenly picked time: we leave no trace nor interaction but still we inhabit this promise.
We arrive at the many tongues and the many nooks and crannies. We descend into the floor through a mirror of ink to reach the aerial with muddy teeth and sandy pockets. Certainly, we let our grubby nails speak of travels along an invisible axis a hundred thousand times walked in vain: those of thefuture tense, those of the unfulfilled promises and the rummaging for lost attention, love et al.
Yet in the centre of my navel a miracle arises. A generation jumps while another succumbs to its knees facilitating a fraternal and tranquil hug. An embrace of collapsing bodies turned into a clash of times and long-gone realities. Amid splitted land two sides convey into a dry wound and we sink again this time upwards into awe, into a mouthful of silence to be kept and drank and perspire swiftly with wide-open eyes.
Half an octagon this mirror where we land and wander reflected pavement. Three steps more and the bending of knees into a sort of liquid vacuum in which to meander and meander again and navigate upside down in the juncture of empty pockets. We find nothing but words here and words there to guide this me and this you and this otherness of warping textures. And I read: Deaf plane of water like the celestial Jerusalem trapped in the number 8, in the belly of the fish, in the vesica pisces, in an aerial mandorla now drawn in the dusty floor of the room recently crossed in slow motion and silence. And you read: Deaf surface harnessed by a transparent matter turned greasy hand writing on spilled water. Perhaps only the trail of a deaf voice limits this kingdom, this realm big as half a horse-shoe. And we surely read: Deaf plane of upside-down water and stone, we spell your name backwards when leaving into the next presence. Fu-tu-re.
And yet our grubby nails might know about the distance (both spatial and time-related) to reach home, destination, origin. We walk this axis knowing barely anything certain of an underworld floating above our heads, down into the navel. Perhaps the idea of a mirror stranded under our feet. And it might be built as a decreasing upside-down Alabaster mastaba, hosting a dark surface for words and names to be reborn: Octagonal hole carved in the floor to reach the heavenly city with its eight towers and eight doors nesting its own secluded pond. A mirror with a reflected mirror within, this space might be. Built in a heavenly cloud though aerially walled as in armour vest. Both light and severe, both under and supraworld hidden in wet transparency, clothed in whispers it screams the tongue of mirrors. Almost here, almost now but almost, dearest.
And thus, the scribbler lands in his chair like the moth slips into darkness: backwards against any logic free falling into the rough abyss of the throat in order to seek for slippery words, slippery pebbles in the guts, as in the gutters of the muddy guts awaits the greatest rhythm.
Somehow, I possess this odd, odd certainty. Let me tell you. Not a thought but a feeling rooted in messy and jumpy, effervescent guts. Odd feeling of being motionless but awake, trapped amidst two realities. I might be a flat presence, a flat conscious but here I am: trapped within two heavy realms I cannot fully grasp. Even though I am aware of its existence, all I get from those are but pulsations that pierce my thin belly-like skin and make me resonate: waves, impacts, shakes I might not understand. And yet I look for myself in this reflected shiny yet dark surface. I wish this surface was self-reflective and could find myself, reflected in retinas. I wish I could dismember these images, these reflected mirages into flat shreds the weight of a shadow. Something that certifies the limit of this limitless fragmented promise.
Self-reflective
Diego Delas
2021
CentroCentro Cibeles
We enter into the horn-shaped space, we progress through the fresh-painted dissected cabinet of wonders and lick with imaginary tongues into those surfaces. We dreamed of long-haired retinas to harness corners and pillars, walls and lighting in a soft embrace. The sort of embrace kids deploy when bringing things into their mouths, to see with the wide watery pond of a licking open infant mouth: now this open one-eye listens colours and cascades motionless into artworks.
As we slowly slip into the exhibition, into this tale of pulsating surfaces – clothed in colour and, devoid of touch – we dream of closeness, we dream of grasping claws, nails rubbing and pen-knife written names on walls. We feel like phantoms gliding through a mistakenly picked time: we leave no trace nor interaction but still we inhabit this promise.
We arrive at the many tongues and the many nooks and crannies. We descend into the floor through a mirror of ink to reach the aerial with muddy teeth and sandy pockets. Certainly, we let our grubby nails speak of travels along an invisible axis a hundred thousand times walked in vain: those of thefuture tense, those of the unfulfilled promises and the rummaging for lost attention, love et al.
Yet in the centre of my navel a miracle arises. A generation jumps while another succumbs to its knees facilitating a fraternal and tranquil hug. An embrace of collapsing bodies turned into a clash of times and long-gone realities. Amid splitted land two sides convey into a dry wound and we sink again this time upwards into awe, into a mouthful of silence to be kept and drank and perspire swiftly with wide-open eyes.
Half an octagon this mirror where we land and wander reflected pavement. Three steps more and the bending of knees into a sort of liquid vacuum in which to meander and meander again and navigate upside down in the juncture of empty pockets. We find nothing but words here and words there to guide this me and this you and this otherness of warping textures. And I read: Deaf plane of water like the celestial Jerusalem trapped in the number 8, in the belly of the fish, in the vesica pisces, in an aerial mandorla now drawn in the dusty floor of the room recently crossed in slow motion and silence. And you read: Deaf surface harnessed by a transparent matter turned greasy hand writing on spilled water. Perhaps only the trail of a deaf voice limits this kingdom, this realm big as half a horse-shoe. And we surely read: Deaf plane of upside-down water and stone, we spell your name backwards when leaving into the next presence. Fu-tu-re.
And yet our grubby nails might know about the distance (both spatial and time-related) to reach home, destination, origin. We walk this axis knowing barely anything certain of an underworld floating above our heads, down into the navel. Perhaps the idea of a mirror stranded under our feet. And it might be built as a decreasing upside-down Alabaster mastaba, hosting a dark surface for words and names to be reborn: Octagonal hole carved in the floor to reach the heavenly city with its eight towers and eight doors nesting its own secluded pond. A mirror with a reflected mirror within, this space might be. Built in a heavenly cloud though aerially walled as in armour vest. Both light and severe, both under and supraworld hidden in wet transparency, clothed in whispers it screams the tongue of mirrors. Almost here, almost now but almost, dearest.
And thus, the scribbler lands in his chair like the moth slips into darkness: backwards against any logic free falling into the rough abyss of the throat in order to seek for slippery words, slippery pebbles in the guts, as in the gutters of the muddy guts awaits the greatest rhythm.
Somehow, I possess this odd, odd certainty. Let me tell you. Not a thought but a feeling rooted in messy and jumpy, effervescent guts. Odd feeling of being motionless but awake, trapped amidst two realities. I might be a flat presence, a flat conscious but here I am: trapped within two heavy realms I cannot fully grasp. Even though I am aware of its existence, all I get from those are but pulsations that pierce my thin belly-like skin and make me resonate: waves, impacts, shakes I might not understand. And yet I look for myself in this reflected shiny yet dark surface. I wish this surface was self-reflective and could find myself, reflected in retinas. I wish I could dismember these images, these reflected mirages into flat shreds the weight of a shadow. Something that certifies the limit of this limitless fragmented promise.