1,04 centímetros
by Raphael Fonseca, 2012
Solo Exhibition Matter
MK Gallery – Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
One inch equals 2.45 centimeters. One foot equals twelve inches. If we multiply these numbers, we arrive at a measurement of 29.4 centimeters within one foot. A historical event must be recalled: the Commonwealth conference of 1959 legally redefined another unit of measurement, the yard, which equals three feet. With its measurement altered and standardized among the participating countries to 91.44 centimeters, we have a kind of checkmate to mathematics: how can a foot now equal 30.48 centimeters if, in theory, it corresponds to that (now discrepant) sum of twelve inches? Setting these figures against each other, we would have a remainder of 1.04 centimeters overtaken by politics.
The works shown here by Felippe Moraes seem to deal with this centimeter of breathing room – that is, they address the invisible chasms between numbers and their false sense of security. In “Chão Medido” and “Homenagem a Pitágoras,” small narratives are created from a field through black-and-white photography. If Albrecht Dürer used engraving to show the viewer different ways of measuring the human body, Felippe Moraes makes use of technical reproducibility to reflect on the relationship between geometry and physical space. The object that digs today is the same one that will be discarded tomorrow; the body that is active and that gives its name to units of measurement is the same one that will be enclosed in a coffin – that is, a wooden quadrilateral. Geometry circles us, and in it we will be enclosed.
In Divisão (2011), matter will be reduced to indices of existence incapable of replacing proper names: a dead body, thirteen corpses thrown into a mass grave, scattered pieces of human flesh. What we see here are trees sliced into logs, but let us not forget, as ½ (2011) shows, the mirror-like quality running through all these images. One half reflects into another, and this small wooden butcher’s shop embodies the many divisions, subtractions, and organizations of space that run through a biography.
Is it possible to bend a tree? Would we have the same doubt about this question if it were asked about the buildings in the background of the photographic image 16kg para dobrar uma árvore (2012)? What is the place of nature at a moment when everything seems open to alteration by human hands? Pieces of tree are turned into museum objects and displayed in metal structures in Totem 1 (2011) and Totem 2 (2011). The viewer savors the texture of these trunks just as we once savored the chisel marks on the exhumed busts and limbs of classical statuary. There is an archaeology of the garden here: let us make strange, and elevate to the status of artifact, these objects we domesticate in order to build these miniature models of nature around our homes. Let us embrace, then, their pulsing primitivism, and turn it into curiosity.
The same Dürer who tried to measure the world is the one who created the famous engraving on melancholy. Surrounded by measuring instruments, holding a compass in her hands, a figure bears the weight of her mind. We can try to trace the radii and diameters of the most diverse shapes, and only one thing will be certain: error. Even at some remove from Tahiti, Felippe Moraes’s work reminds me of the title of one of Paul Gauguin’s most famous paintings: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897). Far from having answers to these questions, we act, and one verb guides us: to persist. We persist in building images, we persist in writing, we persist in finding strange that 1.04-centimeter remainder that would deform any square.
Raphael Fonseca
2012
Originally published for the solo exhibition Matter – MK Gallery.