Skins, grids & drop drawings, 1 / Skins, grids & drop drawings, 2

Paris, 24.10.2014 > 22.11.2014 / Bordeaux, 13.11.2014 > 20.12.2014

The exhibition “Skins, grids & drop drawings” by Sergio Verastegui continues a work that started with the book “a single line which is invisible and unceasing” that was recently published by Art-O-Rama and the Editions P in Marseille at the end of August 2014.

The title of the book comes from a sentence by Jorge Luis Borges, who imagined a maze made out of one unceasing and invisible line. This image allowed me to refer to the idea of process and work towards a mental maze, without an interior or exterior. This maze develops into a form of writing, that, in my work, is sculptural and fragmentary writing.

It is therefore a project in which fragments of narration and History are connected, materials and shapes contaminating one another and territories, spaces, physical movement. In the prospect of going back to a real presence, to the materiality of sculpture and spaces that are psychologically loaded. The idea is to proceed in an archaeological manner to extract parts of the process that have already been started, namely linked to concepts of railings and skin. The work developed for Art-O-Rama will therefore be continued with a new production of artworks and new combinations of these elements.

The artist will create a new series entitled “drop drawings” that will be shown for the first time in the two venues. It is a series of sculpture-drawings created with bronze and gold.

Winner of the “Showroom Prize” of the Art-O-Rama fair, Sergio Verastegui presented the exhibition “a single line which is invisible and unceasing” for the first time in Marseille for the 2014 edition of the fair, from 29 August to 13 September 2014.

“Skins, grids & drop drawings will take place in two parts. The first will be in Paris from 24 October to 22 November. The second will be in Bordeaux from 13 November to 24 January 2015.

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Not always a receptacle in which to grasp him.

 Skin sticking to the railings. Fall. Fragments of narration. Materials and shapes contaminating one another. Territories, spaces, physical movement. Sculpture-drawings, drops, bronze, gold, silver. A maze made up of a single line, unceasing and invisible. Uninterrupted. Going back to a real presence, to the materiality of sculpture. There’s no one left to torture. Saving gestures and means. Ruins. Slice. Leftovers. Reminiscences of a colonial past. Ready-mades. Response. Friedrich Hölderlin. Dos hemisferos. Frozen and recuperated tools that refer to a workshop activity shielded from the eyes. Homo faber. Snake skin as a metaphor of renewal and mutation. Survival. Alternating. Entanglement. Incommunicado. Accidents. Constrictor. Conjugations. Words take time coming. William Carlos Williams. Salvages. Alterations. Luigi Nono (Fragmente-Stille. An Diotima). “Aggregate of ‘unformed fragments”. What I have lost myself. Standard stoppages. Reformulate. A shapeless mass. This way Brouwn. Millefeuille. Opacity and transparency. From one skin to another. Morris Louis. The drawing that makes itself. An archaeology. Prosopagnosia. Autobiographical springs of the skin. “Because he remains nowhere. No sign keeps him. Not always a receptacle in which to grasp him.” A single line interrupted. I modified the installation slightly to have more empty spaces between the artworks. Drop drawings. A repressed space. (One’s) mirror games. A rejuvenated piece starting from disparate elements, renegotiated for the time of an uncertain graft. The sculpture’s stories. What is it to become?

Erik Verhagen, 10/2014