Kissing the Sun, Touching the Moon, Mixing the Waters

2019
Works

Kissing the Sun, Touching the Moon, Mixing the Waters, 2019
Poem, printed sheets of DIN A3 paper on wall, time (55 days), daily performance

In 2019, Kissing the Sun, Touching the Moon, Mixing the Waters was presented at Le Parvis – Centre d’art con­ temporain in Tarbes, France. Every day, at opening and closing time, the art centre hosted a surprising ritual. In the morning, the mediator hung in the gallery a sheet of paper bearing a line from a poem by the artist. In the evening, he took the sheet down and pasted it on the outside wall, at the centre’s entrance. As the action progressed, a temporal layer built up, with the sheets stuck on top of each other like a palimpsest. In exploring poetry writing in fleeting, temporal form, the artist has developed a series of actions that use written material as a daily link to the exhibition space. The length of each poem is determined by the length of the exhibition: equal in lines to the number of days, the text is disclosed in fragments. The action is repeated each day but is never the same; it becomes a ritual and invites new ways of celebrating the quotidian. This simple gesture, which materializes differently in each setting, is a measure of the passing of time that reveals, through the appearance and disappearance of words, a sense of poetic rebellion against the instability of the present.

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    Installation views, Le Parvis – Centre d’art contemporain, Tarbes, France, 2019–2020

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Installation views, Le Parvis – Centre d’art contemporain, Tarbes, France, 2019–2020