MNEMICA
Performance
500 meters of white elastic / Video projection
Variable dimensions
Die Ecke Gallery
Santiago / Chile
2005
An example of nodal tension, speaking of what is mnemonic, we find in the critical exercise of Beccafumi on the canonical exercise of Perugino. It is about virtually juxtaposing the “Annunciation” over the “Pieta” respectively. The mathematical device of a circle inscribed in a square as a structure of schematic, fixed and symmetric representation is tensed, subjected to a new trial consisting in emptying the full figurative core, this is, with Perugino all of the (pictoric) space was arranged in virtue of a “subject of fundament”, the virgin in the case mentioned, which is the measure to put in order all the spatial (and ideological) relations. Precisely this “fundament” is displaced by Beccafumi, a displacement of such proportions that it is left demanded at the very border of the pictorial space (lower right angle), in other words, bordering on the limit of representation. Beccafumi empties a canonic fundament to fill space with a relative, tense/relaxed one. Effectively the sole possible subject is the “trial” –something like a premature Cartesian ME- whose look is threatened to an open and evanescent space stripped of the figure and the theme. In this way there is no figure predetermining a background, but rather, a spectator open to juxtapose the “fundament” to be filled. In the “Annunciation” everything occurs in the space to be determined between the annunciating angel (upper left angle) and the virgin, producing a rhomboid and an ellipsis (both virtual) inscribed in the concrete square of the painting’s support by effect of the tensions of the visual weights in the representation.
Nevertheless Mahaluf is not a manierist. Admitting this label would precisely mean to admit a formalism and its respective decentering totally de-contextualized of their own ideological (and merely mnemonic) problems. It is something else. Like Beccafumi supposed a possible eccentricity regarding the norm, or rather taking the norm to its extreme and with it the (absolute) ideological decentering hagiography supposed the “remains” to be emptied); Mahaluf (now) supposes a space to be continuous and systematically maximized. “Node” exhausted the spatial possibilities of the very of its location in the structural fatigue following the (elastic) tension. Because of this the performatic relaxation located at the Die Ecke gallery assumes the exhaustion of the artistic and exhibition practices reaching beyond the very decentering, this is, extravagance. Mahaluf is supposing a reflexibility at the very place of his locations. There is a point of interest for such a suspicion and its performances. It is a 3D video projection which is, in part, the scenery for what performatically happens not only in a moment restrained of all of MNEMONICA’s time, moment in which Mahaluf’s performance exhibits the relaxation of the “Nodule” rubbers. The video projection shows the traveling across the “topography” like a virtual flaneur, where maps are superimposed, the circuits (of Chilean art). Yes, “Nodule” was not held as an artistic event in itself but as a display process fulfilled (or not) in time and space; in the agendas and artistic protocol locations. The appearance of Mahaluf’s performatic action and the fractal projection of the landscape is presented as a split. Because of this the importance of bringing the performative objects of “Nodule” (and the ruins of their tension) with itself, relaxed now, to specify a performative work possible in an uncertain topography. Mahaluf knows ruins only appear as the memory of what is missing; Mahaluf knows that the table of (Chilean) art only exhibits "stale bread crusts".
*Extract text from "Stale bread crusts" by Juan Francisco Garate