The title of this exhibition is taken from a poem by the Czech-German expressionist poet Rainer Maria Rilke, which appears in his “El Libro de las Horas”. The poem begins like this:
Dear earth that darkens,
with patience, you endure the walls we build.
Perhaps, you allow cities to continue for one more hour
and grant another two hours to churches and monasteries
and to those who work—maybe let their labor absorb them
for another five hours, or seven.
Before you turn back into forest, water, and wild growth,
at that moment of inconceivable terror
when you withdraw your name from all things.
(….)
Far from sowing fear, Rilke assumes the condition of extreme vulnerability to make a promise:
Give me a little more time.
I want just a little more time because I am going to Love things
as no one has dared to love them,
until they are real,
and worthy of you.
(….)
It is hard to look at the present without pain, without the feeling that every initiative we take seems minimal, insignificant, in comparison to the scale of the changes that are happening. How to ask for time to love differently? How will we be able to sustain bonds of trust, offer gestures of support, and use a language that is accurate, precise, devoid of violence and resentment? For a long time now, the contemplation encouraged by art has ceased to be an exercise in aesthetics to become a collective exercise of introspective ethics. Ethics is a normative discipline; it is always concerned with the question of what we ought to do. We must see things as they are, without molding our vision of reality to our desires, to what we wish it to be. We must value all positions, even the most radical and opposed, to attain an understanding of the world. We must endure others, even though this may be a bitter, almost unbearable exercise. We must foster flashes, the moments that open up to intuition and allow us—for a second—to glimpse an exit from monolithic positions.
It’s true, I blindly trust that art—and the possibility of finding language from the space it creates with its presence—is capable of making us get out of the bad habit of repeating what everyone says and doing very little to improve the things that are closer to us. Art generates—at least I have felt it this way—motivation to find a language that enables us to speak differently and see if there is a possibility of gaining a bit more time, of redirecting resentment towards kinder feelings, of softening the harshness that constantly looms over us.
This is an exhibition of artists whom I admire for their ability to provide sharpness and meaning from the surface of painting or matter. All of them share an ambition for depth without making the work heavy or obtuse. They all observe, then formulate hypotheses and systems that materialize in the work itself without the need for many arguments or words. In all of them, there is an inclination towards emotionality, towards the importance of expression in the work to reach us. It ended by quoting the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran. At the end of a conversation with Cioran about his life, his work, his fears, and pleasures, when François Bondy was about to leave Cioran’s house, Cioran warns him, insists: “I forgot to tell you that I am a marginal, a marginal who writes to awaken. Tell them again, my books can awaken.” I love this little story of a thinker known for his nihilistic and pessimistic thoughts, who nevertheless, with conviction, appeals to the possibility of awakening.
