Lethe explores the symbol of the cave as a psychological space. A silent, meditative ground that may open a gate to the subconscious mind. Fragments of Beckett’s Company connect with excerpts of Ovid’s version of the myth of Echo and Narcissus. Both texts are internal dialogues of characters that appear disconnected from the world around them, but that, primarily, they seem to have lost touch with themselves.
There is a close correlation between the landscape of the cave and the psychological landscape of the characters. The cavern is given human, bodily attributes - stalactites are described as bones; the shape of the rock’s entrails, a womb - whereas the characters seem to be losing their sensorial and corporeal characteristics to become only a voice in the dark. One that reverberates, repeats, doubles, and yet does not seem to be able to articulate a message. It is perhaps in this grotesque distortion, devoid from their senses, that they may experience something other, undiscovered, unknown.
Echo
A voice
silver gelatin print
9.3 x 11.8 cm
silver gelatin print
9.3 x 11.8 cm
As wax melts before the gentle fire
darkly then the fading form
- ‘Stay!’, shouted, ‘Stay!’
A Flame
silver gelatin print
30 x 40 cm
a mere murmur. Here suddenly seen
how his eyes close as soon as the voice sounds.
Should they happen to be open at the time.
So light as let be faintest light no longer perceived
than the time it takes the lid to fall.
Taste? The taste in his mouth? Long since dulled.
Touch? The thrist of the ground against his bones.
Orpheus
silver gelatin print
117 x 153 cm
(This) precious stone set in the silver sea
Copperfield Gallery, February 2020
curated by Aina Pomar
with Irene de Andrés, Inés Cámara Leret, Yorgos Petrou,
Stéphanie Saadé, Oscar Santillán + Yoko Ono
http://www.copperfieldgallery.com/this-precious-stone-set-in-the-silver-sea.html
Copperfield Gallery, February 2020
curated by Aina Pomar
with Irene de Andrés, Inés Cámara Leret, Yorgos Petrou,
Stéphanie Saadé, Oscar Santillán + Yoko Ono
http://www.copperfieldgallery.com/this-precious-stone-set-in-the-silver-sea.html
The excerpts of text in this project belong to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Company’.
The images were made in Greece, where one of the entrances to the Underworld is believed to be, and the location of some of the passages of Homer’s Odyssey. In Greek Mythology the cavern is a place of origin and disappearance, of revelation and forgetfulness; the liminal space between life and death.
The images were made in Greece, where one of the entrances to the Underworld is believed to be, and the location of some of the passages of Homer’s Odyssey. In Greek Mythology the cavern is a place of origin and disappearance, of revelation and forgetfulness; the liminal space between life and death.