umbra
Imagine any object, one you do not recognize, a material contained within a form that resists definition. Until you name it, that object is nothing; it barely exists. Now imagine another object at a certain distance from the first, another form, another material, another mass. Until it is named, no relationship exists between them. Who among all anonymous and silent observers has the prerogative to name what has not yet been named? Everyone and no one, since naming things is, paradoxically, an anonymous task. Every name is also the product of a historical process. The more distant that process, the harder it is to trace, like a footprint that fades over time.
Now imagine that both objects exist, that they have names, and that an agreement has been reached to assign them, an agreement that is conventional, belonging to everyone and no one, and that endures through seasons, years, ages, and eras. Both objects, and the relationship between them, finally acquire a meaning that can be transmitted, nuanced, debated, and ultimately rejected. In short, knowledge comes into being. The object is no longer mute, no longer alone; it now coexists with a multitude of forms, all defined, all meaningful, systematically arranged in the light of a clear language. If this network of relationships is successfully transmitted and endures, it becomes science, the framework that makes the past intelligible, the present progressive, and the future predictable.
The success of this universal language is so unquestionable that, as often happens with success, it forgets its origin: a gaze of astonishment, an unanswered question, an initial dialogue between what is seen and the one who sees. Through this enforced amnesia, science imposes interpretations, directs questions, and points toward the correct answers. It does so because the knowing subject shares the same categories with others. Otherwise, it would be impossible for wax to remain the same wax after melting, after dissipating, after inaugurating, with Descartes, a universally valid method of knowledge.
It is no coincidence, or if it is, it does not seem so, that wax is the central material in this exhibition. This time, however, it illuminates no method and paves the way for no discovery. Instead, wax conceals findings and reverses the process. The artist’s gesture is clear. Returning to shadow, catalogued objects become unknown once again, like contours dissolving behind a veil of mist. The gesture returns the object to its unnamed origin, to astonishment and the primal question, and therefore to the possibility of a new dialogue between observer and observed.
Without the mediation of an established system of signs, concepts, and categories, interpretive possibilities multiply, an openness more characteristic of aesthetic experience than of the disciplined reason of the sciences. The achievement lies buried here. Beneath new layers, the object of knowledge, once described, catalogued, concrete, and univocal, becomes, by the artist’s will, a work of art: singular, open, and polysemous. What kind of knowledge this new object-work offers will depend on the viewer. It will be a private, anonymous, and yet real experience.
“Veiling to See” Text by Santiago Mazarrasa