CIÀULA DISCOVERS THE MOON Santiago Reyes Villaveces
Ncontemporary
29 June—8 October 2022 Milan, Italy
A pale blue dot. A pearl in the black sea. An eye watching over us all. A graphite egg laying hold upon this text. [Big, peaceful, like a fresh and luminous ocean of silence], the heavy load of the moon on your hands. Is it possible?
Behold where we stand. At a massive distance from the dot, surrounded by its silvery light. In this territory made out of limited surfaces and ruling powers. Immersed in the timeless, futile effort to conquer the moon. Only to realize that we are lingering within the depths of our grounds, the echoes of extraction politics and powers.
The show “Ciàula scopre la luna” is a confrontation with the technoscientific representation of the moon and the commodification of this faraway land into a romanticised symbol, collectively owned. The works bring an assemblage of observations on the political exploitation of the moon and the forced perception of outer space as a physical and social narrative. The space becomes a sculpture to be explored—revealed under the surfaces of meanings and events. Three dimen- sionality and surfaces dissolve into binaries, a meeting between apparently opposing materiali- ties. Surfaces are the threshold points between paintings, drawings, prints, and installations; the space in between is left to be defined. A rock is a pigment is a keystone is a zone. The graphite is diffused on the works, coating, and re-signifying the intercurrent materials, such as paper, metal, clay, or walls.
Materiality comprises the epidermic surface of the show, the ground for us to step in. Like in a trip to the Moon and back, SRV targets the tactics of extractivism and anthropocentric views, and creates an overview of possibilities for us to explore, question, subvert and resist to the logics of colonial seduction; and discover anew the beauty of the moon.
[…] That night the pickmen wanted to go home without extracting all the brimstone that was needed for that day […]
