I was thinking about you, about the last time I saw you. The last time I eloped. The last time I heard you say it, and Geórgia mentioned: “Put your mouth where your money is, put your money where your money is . . .” And broke your testament, made it into a rap, made it a song that juxtaposed meaning in a conflicting way from the same source and twisted your sentence into a new form. I remember seeing her song on a wall extending ad infinitum, varying the tempo as it became more sexual, and your voice, became clear as it evolved into a myriad of signs.
Christian Schoeler’s paintings are somehow an echo of that quest or your longing . . . those guys, gorgeous guys, seem to belong to fashion magazines with their skin peeling in layers of thinly-applied oil . . . 1000-thousand decisions running together, their desire unbound and in the open. Wandering. They are caught in that moment where libido puts you at the mercy of the world and the unfolding of texts, where naming ends and you are exposed thoroughly. It seems like those guys stop for a minute at their last drink in a bar to realize that their need is somehow circular, tends to go outwards but in spite of their best efforts, comes back to get them . . . Do they look for themselves? The text in Geórgia eats her other version, overlaps, comes back to eat itself -- is this cannibalism?
The words you gave me are present in these sculptures by Carlos Sandoval de Leon: a bulletproof structure with the remains of passed nights (stolen or hidden.) that are at once the place of sex and ritual, the place of silence and the unattainable. Those objects frame taboo in a format that is both Lampedusean and Borgesian, while cryptically addressing the authority of a verb.
From here out -- from this point on -- I see Hernan’s works, loaded with escapes, loaded with strategies to cope with the mutating aspect of love and solitude; the constitutional void that forms desire, your desire passed so utterly fragmented and stupidly haunting me, morphing into this new version of you. Those romantic landscapes so abstract and protean own me (or that boy). And you, ambivalent about that book, that brushstroke, your work and mine, corrupting yourself to the center of fear, stay there approaching us. Marina's proposal deals with the void. She is emptied by pressure. Not by the works per se, but by the dynamics of the role in this situation. Maybe the position of desire should be the position of the inactive, the passive: I was born in the desert, Been down for years, Jesus come closer . . . Think my time is near . . .1
Marcos’s poetry catapults a line of propositions into the openness of the road, the voice emigrates (becoming Desire-Dad, Dad-Desire) and it remainds me, where you always present? You where certainly in a plane of speculation, discussion and tension. Terence can somehow conjure a line that is dirty, a dogma that resonates within operations of phenomena. The issue he brings here is sort of a sketch for a performative frame that is changing into two sick, young fruits, drastic pursuits.2
Bruce seems to say Big thick, Black boots, Paul's trick just suits, Don't kick, Just Lick, Disputes! He Soots! 3 And his army is wandering again as he is composing the perfect structure for my nightmare: a critical eye on your power. And as Dean gives us a glimpse into the gaze, reliable, uncanny (yet new) I cannot help but thinking about the issue of availability. Jen brings it forward as Cybill Shepherd dancing at 17, seducing her Director, becoming Cybill, ritualistically exposing the path of desire where identities are stolen and your voice becomes that operation that sustains her quest. Simon brings a Pater, a Deus and notes, a diary of the unavoidable, a poesis that embraces hermeneutically your position of Shadow-Father. Your position of Desire-Father. His guys, his notes, in random proportions, in specific directions are all, as we speak, establishing a pattern in the periphery of the symbolic.
So, I guess the works exhibited bring us back to that moment where Desire and Dad get blurred, stretched, and yes all tôo sudden I finally get it: you are ashamed that I was a good friend of american soldiers.4
Diego Singh
São Paulo, October 2010
Artists:
Geórgia Sagri
Christian Schoeler
Hernan Bas
Carlos Sandoval de Leon
Marcus Bries
Jen De Nike
Terence Koh
Bruce La Bruce
Dean Sameshima
Simon English
Marina Peres Simao
1: Harvey P. J: To bring you my love, To Bring you my Love, Island Records, 1995
2: Rimbaud Arthur: Jeune Goinfre (Young Glutton) Translated by Paul Schmidt, Harper Perennial Classics 2000.
3: Rimbaud Arthur: Jeune Goinfre (Young Glutton) Translated by Paul Schmidt, Harper Perennial Classics 2000.
4: Amos Tori, Playboy mommy, From the choirgirl hotel, Atalntic Records, 1998.
