GTBT Start Introduction Itinary Outro
The first and striking element that stood out in the exhibition by Emilio Moreno was the use of earth. The Spanish artist showed a carefully composed floor piece that was informed by several references, like a 'composition' of flat stones which he found on Olkhon ground, ritual altars and sacred arrangements of which it is said that they make the communication between different levels of reality easier, earth drawings by ancient American-Indian tribes, the strong narrative capacity of archaeological remains, as well as the game hopscotch where children draw rectangles on the floor or the ground that stand for ‘steps’ in an imagined ladder or bridge from earth to heaven. The work evoked various connotations and its totemic form suggested that we were looking at something foreign, something not so easy to access. One very important element that was not mentioned yet, is that on the earth, burnt matches had been put, figures that could almost be seen as stand-ins for human beings. One could find the matches carefully arranged as if they were remains of some kind of an unknown code, bringing to mind Morse, or flag language. About his choice to use the matches, the artist wrote:
'Yesterday and today I've been working in the idea of using matches:
1-I like the idea –mentioned by the Shaman– of fire as the medium between all spaces and times, and as the necessary element for humans to have access to the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhh!!!!! (This concept of a sound that stands for The Whole is extremely beautiful.)
2-I feel attracted to the idea of using the time it takes for a match to put out as a measuring unit of time. Besides, these matches would stand for a number of attempts to make connections between different levels of reality in terms of space and time. I will try to make this idea more concrete later.
3- I see the put out match as a ruin, a poetical trace with a sculptural value, very nicely charged with the history of the mentioned attempts, that I see as attempts for (in darkness) looking for some aim, some connection. These matches, then, would stand as the remains of the search that I've been dealing with during the whole project and more concretely during our time in the island. You know that one of my goals for this trip was to loose control over my brainy working methods, and you know as well that it was very difficult for me at some points in the island to find myself in complete darkness. Somehow I feel like if I have been on all fours, trying to look for a nail in a huge fictitious space. The presence of a lot of used matches might involve a kind of repeated failure in the past, but it seems to me that seeing the remains of that process, the used matches stand for a poetic story ambiguously referring to the meaning of a past action. An action in which we are looking for something of whose existence we are not even sure of.'' *
