____ (breath, blow, kiss)
Binz39 Foundation, Zurich (CH)
curated by Céline Matter
2024
—EXHALE
x RESTING
● BLOWS
orange glow pigment on grey
borrowed resting architecture
glass sculptures
exhibition view
2024
Photo: StudioStucky
_____ (breath, blow, kiss)
In art institutions (as well as in public or private spaces) the circulation of bodies is imposed: where and how fast to walk, where and when to rest, how much distance to keep from the works of art and from which perspective to look at them. According to standard practice, the center of a painting should be positioned between 1.40 m and 1.50 m from the floor. Even if this approach tries to establish a connection to the body, it does not take into account the complexities of bodies and contraditions of life. “The body” is not one fixed - or average- entitiy hermetically sealed off from its surroundings, but is porous and in a constant state of motion: cells grow and die, the intake of air expands lungs, our bodies move in continuous loops, breath after breath.
When our movement is choreopoliced (to borrow a term from André Lepecki), it means that freedom is preconditioned by subtly providing pathways for circulation that are introjected as the only ones imaginable, or the only ones deemed appropriate. In this imposed circulation of seemingly consensual subjectification, we follow pre-choreographed patterns of corporeality and belonging.
In _____ (breath, blow, kiss), LETHE enacts a choreography of its own. The movement in and through the exhibition are rendered as a constitutive part of the show - while at the same time being subtly altered:
Five different shades
of grey challenge the seeming neutrality of the convention of white walls, while benches from three different Swiss art institutions transform places of rest into places about resting. The glowing orange traces on the wall are both the result and the cause of a rhythm; that of the contraction and release of breath.
Even though breathing is our body’s most innate ‘intelligence’, the breath is chronically shallow in Western societeis, resulting in a double loss: the loss of inherent body knowledge and the loss of moving freely. The former is often attempted to be restored through disciplining standardized paradigms, as seen in the increasing popularity of breathing exercises, learding to the detriment of the latter. (As it is often not the ideas that are shared but the exercises that are rigidly followed.) However, the exhibition is not the attempt to separate the physcial body from sensory and sensual vulnerability, but the embrace of the fragmentary and fluid body that resists pre-choreographed patterns of corporeality and subjectification.
For it is in the places we don’t pay much attention to: in the spaces in between – such as the nine orange glass tubes that pierce the wall and the three ceramic works that soften the edges of the walls – where life unfolds as the body – LETHE claims – ‘always resists in smallest of ways and through gestures and codes of subverion predetermined conventions and norms’. In LETHE’s amalgamation of loosely arranged fragments, artistic expression doesn’t take place under the primacy of its control, but as non-propositional throughts, presences, rhythms and pauses – thus extending the existing choreographies into infinite, unpredicteable yet-to-be’s.
Céline Matter
● BLOWglass sculpture0.8 cm diameter, variable lengths2024Photo: Studio Stucky
● BLOWS
glass sculptures
0.8 cm diameter, variable lengths
2024
Photo: Studio Stucky
—EXHALE
x RESTING
● BLOWS
\ SPIDERPARTS
orange glow pigment on grey
borrowed resting architecture
glass sculptures
risograph print
exhibition view
2024
Photo: Studio Stucky
—EXHALE
x RESTING
orange glow pigment on grey
borrowed resting architecture
exhibition view2024Photo: Studio Stucky
—EXHALE
x RESTING
● BLOWS
\ SPIDERPARTS
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
orange glow pigment on grey
borrowed resting architecture
glass sculptures
risograph print
graphite, transfer tattoo foil, archival map
exhibition view2024Photo: Studio Stucky
\ SPIDERPARTS
risograph print
2024Photo: Studio Stucky
\ SPIDERPARTS
risograph print2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
graphite, orange pigment, tattoo transfer foil in archival mapscomposition I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
graphite, orange pigment, tattoo transfer foil in archival mapscomposition IV, V, VI, VII2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
graphite, orange pigment, tattoo transfer foil in archival mapscomposition I, II, III2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
graphite, tattoo transfer foil
in archival mapcomposition III2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
graphite, tattoo transfer foil
in archival mapcomposition IV2024 Photo: Studio Stucky
⎮ARRANGEMENTS, FLASHES
detail, compisiton VI2024 Photo: Studio Stucky