In Calmaria (Calm), a canvas (11 metres long x 5 metres wide) fixed to the gutter pipe goes through the gallery space, sloping to the ground. In its superior part, a cloud of salt crystals absorbs and agglutinates the humidity of the atmosphere, changing the aerated water into gradual precipitation – a light rain that pours down the surface of the canvas, leaving its imprint. Once this artificial situation is set up, it detonates a movement which changes the state of the matters involved. Moreover, it is submitted to the constant effect of the force of gravity – causing the dripping of liquid water – independent of any human strength or will.
It is interesting to note that this cycle comprises something intrinsic to the pictorial process: the accumulation of time as it goes by, the ontological increment of trying to hold back this movement, just as a painting retains the brush-strokes that it is invested with or that are taken from it. Furthermore, the fact that the canvas was baked results in a diversity of colours and intensifies the continuous tension between humidity and dryness, which correspond to the salt and water. Once an image is formed, the viewer turns his attention to the spatial displacement: the canvas goes through both floors of the gallery, making it impossible to embrace it all in one look – a proposition of a quality which is frequently also pictorial: to activate the imagination of something that will still be. The natural cycle which produces this work of art is reinforced: both the canvas and the rain come from above, seeking the ground.
In a smaller work (113cm x 158cm), a burnt piece of paper is framed in a glass box containing, on the surface, another cloud of crystallized salt. With ten centimetres between them, the materials meet in a static relation – the cloud and its shadow, the movement is now totally in imagination.
The same interest for essentially changeable materials was the stimulus for the video Prototide (14′ min.). The film shows the encounter between the mass of a campfire lit up on a beach and the sea water inching in on it. The driving force is, once again, a continuous natural cycle, the tide, but now confrontation is more dramatic, focusing on the fugacity of a game between amorphous matters. In dynamic connection with the history of art, Thiago Rocha Pitta had already remembered the English romantic painter, Turner, when he set fire to a boat floating on the sea and filmed the process, calling the video Tribute to William Turner (2002)
Completing the exhibition Cinema Fóssil (Fossile Movie) is a work shown in the backyard of the gallery. A rectangular hole dug into the ground and filled with burning coal can be seen through the reflection it produces on a stainless steel mirror. The almost hypnotic agitation of the fire, as it fades out – it will only be lit once at the opening of the show - is mediated by this sort of archaic movie screen. The act of hiding and revealing at the same time places this work at the core of a contemporary question, which is the fact that we live in an endless culture of images and reproductions, in a circuit that dissolves the power of the image.