Two sharp curves: a drawing in mid-air

Southwark Park, London 2007

I

When I was a kid I was intrigued by the kind of fly that seems to fly forever, hovering around in circles, ascending and descending for hours, but always out of reach, taking advantage of the slightest air current. At that age, also, like all kids, I was a hunter. In the long summer afternoons I experimented with countless strategies and weapons in my desire to shoot down these master pilots; my weapon of choice became a flat rubber band, of the kind used to hold together packets of mail and important papers. Cut open and handled properly, only this device seemed to possess the speed and accuracy to achieve the desired purpose; without destroying the room in my efforts, that is.

Very soon, my child-hunter's mind realized a few things about my prey. First of all, that its flight patterns were predictable. The ascending and descending spirals seemed to create a shaft in mid air, a cylindrical territory whose outer boundaries were quite precise, so that even if I could not see the fly all of the time, I could predict more or less accurately where it would be, eventually. Failed attempts taught me something else: every time I tried and failed to kill the fly, it seemed to ricochet anywhere and everywhere at the same time at lightning speed, becoming invisible to the human eye; the slow lazy curves of the fly's territorial spiral instantly replaced by evasive maneuvering and sharp curves of blind panic. It was only after lying on my bed for a long time, frustrated, observing my prey that I realized that if unmolested, the fly would eventually return to its familiar and secure flight pattern. Another useful realization was that the fly would be more visible, and therefore more vulnerable, if seen against the flat colour of the ceiling than if I tried to pinpoint its location against the background of my books, or the normally busy environment of my juvenile room. After that, it was only a matter of time.


II

Years later, in my first studio, an old house I shared with other artists in the Borough of Bellavista, the problem of the visibility of the fly came to my attention again. In that building there was a long corridor that led towards the bathroom. Being an old house, the ceiling was quite high and this particular section had glazing high along the left (north) side. During the summer, sunlight poured through the open windows, broken by the regular shadows projected by the adobe wall. During the summer, also, the corridor and the studio, were populated by an indeterminate number of flies and other insects that flew in from the garden outside. Sitting in the lounge area of the studio I watched the flies as they appeared under the ray of light and then disappeared under the projected shadows. No longer a youthful hunter of flies, I was by then more concerned with drawing and therefore for me, the problem of visibility vs. invisibility now involved specific problems of construction and form. At the time, also, my thoughts were mostly about the emergence of form, line and, in general, the kind of idle but productive theorizing one has over a good cup of coffee shared with interesting friends.

In retrospect, I realize now that what I was looking at in my studio so many years ago was the fragmented trajectory of the flight of the flies, broken traces of light and shadow that created form in mid air; the very same cylindrical territory I had seen in my room as a kid, only this time broken down by shadow that cut across the path of the flies. Given time and sufficient paper and ink, perhaps I could argue with some success that it was precisely at this point that the flight of the fly, the space it inhabited and modeled, became a sculpture, a mobile, whose meaningful form was revealed to me through the combined effect of light falling on a material surface and the recurrence of movement on my memory; or perhaps I could find some connection with the scanner that creates the image on tube-TV sets, dashing across the curved glass screen at a speed of 1/36 of a second. I could probably do that, but I am not going to.


III

Instead I will refer to two aspects of this reverie that directly concern my project for the exhibition "Rights of Way" at Southwark Park, London. The first is the question of virtual form and the flight pattern of the fly, in specific, a possible reason for that pattern. You see, already as a child-hunter I instinctively knew that through its flight pattern the fly was keeping out of my reach, that at a certain height, the centre of the room was the safest place for it to be in. Knowing this, the cylinder created by the flight pattern of the fly could be seen as a safe haven, a secure place, a home, so to speak. The second aspect has to do with light's fragmentation of the trajectory of the fly in connection with my choice of site and form for my work: two wooden garden protections defining two sharp curves in a pathway there is in London's Southwark Park.


IV

In his essay for the exhibition "Rights of Way," Alexander Garcia-Duttman discusses the relationship there is between art and nature. One point he makes is how nature "touches" the beholder, causing some form of pleasure in him/her, some kind of relief, feelings, he argues, that are very similar to those generated by the contemplation of certain forms of art. But is this relationship always pleasurable, do we always feel relief when we find ourselves out in the open? Are we, as he says, "drawn to the openness for which nature (...) stands?" Like the fly, like most of us I would say, I am apprehensive in empty open spaces (otherwise why do we feel a longing for home, why do we persist in building refuges, walls, a secure life for ourselves?) Confronted by this fear of the void, I instinctively seek security in my own work, in my own interpretations of nature, executing familiar choreographies, recurrent bodily movements and territorial gestures. In the vast space of Southwark Park, with the same blind panic of the fly, I instinctively sought, and found form, graphic elements defining a space of relief, perhaps not one of pleasure, but at the very least one offering me the comfort of an old, almost forgotten memory of time and place.

Most of the work I do is on paper in a relatively conventional shape and scale. When I was invited to participate in the project "Rights of Way" I was pushed out of my comfort zone, forced to engage with the "outside" and because of this, like the fly, I instinctively created for myself a conceptual cylinder of safety, a territory within the vast space of nature as it was revealed to me in Southwark Park.

Clearly cut against the flat green playing fields, the garden protections comprise two sharp curves of alarm, material residues of memories, elements of drawing, avenues through which to retreat into the comfort of the lazy curves and perceived safety of the cylindrical space in flight that is my work.

The piece I proposed for the exhibition "Rights of Way" was the three-dimensional materialization of a fragmented trajectory, a visual accelerator that instinctively defines form, content and flow through the illuminating light of my consciousness as it plays on the dark matter of forgotten memories.