LOS LOGRADOS / exhibition Momu & No Es (DAI, 2013) / Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander y Cantabria.

| tag: Santander

Epacio MeBas.
MAS, Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander y Cantabria.
del 21/12.2010 al 27/01.2013

http://momuandnoes.com/

 

GIANT BLOCK  / text by Mariano Mayer

At each of our encounters, from the first to the last, he did not talk about the features of the library he had built from a single block, and which surface he intended to enlarge. Neither did he mention this in his letters, or notes, or cards. He never mentioned it in his books. He just dedicated himself to complete it and, for all we know, to use it. Neither did he add this venture, which he carried with him for so long, to the last signals of conversation. He spoke vehemently, and the speeches he gave left no room for dialogue. However, the rate at which he handled his words showed the effort he made to avoid his fanaticism from drowning out that minimum level of courtesy. He used every second of our meetings to pronounce speeches crammed with descriptions Empire style objects and furniture, with such detail that it seemed more like he was reading aloud an encyclopedia rather than a mode of conversation. However, between the exquisite and differential flaunt of laurel crowns, eagles and feline heads made by all type of bronze workers and the insistence in pointing out that the only way he had to differentiate the false from the true was to check the temperature of the smelting, there appeared an object whose prominence and specificity annulled all brightness of erudition and allowed me to completely surrender to the dazzle of attention. He was not speaking of books, the only leading characters I believe, but of portable heights; but not directly, he rather offered a somewhat ambiguous description of any object related to height and these could be from a small silver ombu to decorate a desktop to a rudimentary stairway built from a combination of needs. The incorporation of these objects, which were marginal at first sight, was more than a new digression in our topography. To this argumentative absence, which became my obsession from the second meeting, a new set of elements was added, the first that could relate through their functional qualities to the giant piece composed with mahogany shelves and inhabited by almost nine thousand volumes. But, how? I was trapped in an uncertain quest, following any clue like a greyhound that keeps its nose at ground level to keep track, without seeing for sure where it is headed. Although my sense of smell did not weaken, it forced me to keep the same position and it certainly was a test for my patience. Such a state of suspension prevented me from reacting immediately and moved aside the sense of my functions, which was none other than to offer a solution for the enlargement of the library. For that time being I did not perceive any other need but to act as an extra for conversation. The library classificatory system did not allow a glimpse of a way of thinking and the absence of major and surrounding areas prevented its segmentation and thus the possible deduction of criteria. Despite this, I was convinced that the project was organized around an axis that exceeded the cumulative notion. In the same way that useless data were offered to me, I became obsessed in trying to find a door that would allow me a glimpse of the direction of my building, or rather of the proposal, since we were still at the initial stage. Given the almost monumental importance that the ascending forms were starting to gain, I started trying to hear beyond. The first thing that caught my attention was how very effectively his comments met with conservation aspects, like the fact of suggesting fireproof material for its realization. The multiplicity of his words and also the inability to fulfil his search allowed me to understand that it actually wasn't about coming up with the perfect form but to turn the last one into a prototype in observation. A perennial search and a single objective, feeding the inquiry! I could see clearly that if there was any element of relation, it was in each of the 30 degree slopes, which were proclaimed again and again. The priority aspects that supported my constructor's logic, which should be raised in the first term and under the greatest clarity, began to crumble. It was only through the holes where I could start linking his particular interest to my possible contribution. I remembered that ladders have a maximum height of five meters, once this height is superseded they are no longer portable and become fixed structures, or what is the same, they no longer are ladders and become scaffolding. That is, it was about constituting an ascendant object that could not respond to any conventional pattern, an object whose appearance would not unveil its functions. In these reflections a kind of body request began to take position beside the fact that any structure that allows going upwards on sections, housed in its original stage a sacral element of difficult annulment. The ascent may be the way to any form of faith, and this may be the light, the gods, the moon or books. Despite this and after having embraced this idea with confidence, his explicit desire to reach the maximum height, before appeasing all deliberation, increased my need to get some kind of accuracy. Now that I managed a hypothesis and that it hinted the wish to link heaven and earth, and the record that such action didn't culminate in a maximum height but in the spines of a row of books, the deductive activity was only starting. Far from becoming a catastrophe, this fact was my touch of presumption, my monologue of conjectures, the arrow shot into the future of the ever new. A book; a last shelf; the head touching the ceiling.