We bottom out: the sky is not the limit. Beyond the sky there is still ground, an infinity which is ground. Infinity, rather, is a limit. But not the, absolutely: just one, one of many.
A negotiable limit, like the infinite in Blanchot: “The infinite extricates itself from the finite only as the latter’s incapacity to finish finishing… even the absolute, as a massive solitary affirmation, bears the mark of what it denies, inasmuch as the absolute is the rejection of every solution, the breaking off of every bond and of every relation… the infinite is constituted with respect to the finite, as its negation-insertion (the infinite is the nonfinite and is also in-finite).”(1)

So we continue in this direction. Which? Intending that we continue toward the infinite would be as dubious as asserting that there would be natural light. And yet, so be it: of light.

The work is an Isthmus (1992), a first opening toward that light. A miniscule window is relatively miniscule, for what it frames and reveals is infinity, the vast outside of a sky. In a negotiable corner (is that not a first plan of ours?) of the infinite which is ground, someone lay down his suitcases, three, closed, ready to travel. We cannot be sure that they belong to father, mother and child, family luggage; but we could venture to say that it’s a domestic flight. But what flight (we know that our final plan leads to no terminal), when such a crude, simplistic window made of sticks is not of any aircraft? It’s homemade, domestic, a little house window.

Even less aerial is that sky: either there is nothing infinite about it or it knew not how to negotiate, taking therefrom no value other than the proof that the infinite, coarse, is nothing more than a falsification. This sky does not even move, for it is photographic white and blue, picture postcard cloud and sky. Hence it is skin, film. So, and only in this way, the window reveals: everything is interior.

The cases are also of skin, the cases are also of earth, the cases are also of the home: they breathe, purr domesticated, like pets. There is something within animating these beasts.
Or rather, they say animals have no soul: there is something here outside animalizing these suitcases. But there inside and here outside they lose meaning when there is no direction.

[It is not the suitcases that are imprisoned, it is us who are prey. They are like minotaurs. They catch man in the labyrinths that they guard (it is due to this lack of meaning that we lose our heads when we become beasts). The same goes for pets: they do all they can to stop their owners from leaving the house. Nonetheless, it will be necessary to open these bags (which are heavy, they are our loads) in some remote connection to release our animality from ourselves. For is it animality not released precisely when the human is absent?]

Ah, finally a terminal! The same one that lights this sky nailed to that wall binds these creatures that are pure malaise on this living room floor. Captive to the electrical power grid, light and respiration are artificial. Our trip now hangs by a wire.

Even more so because isthmus is an earth wire, wire of the earth that needs to be disconnected. It was necessary to suppress the isthmus connected (the sky, the desired?) to the undesirable continent in order to reach the Utopia (Morus). Were utopia not a finite place we could never wish or intend to arrange our meetings in some place of the infinite. However, the non-finite is equality in-finite: the island will always send us back to the continent. Even in the labyrinths: everything is exterior.

For there it is, domestic, the end of this journey: after utopia there is ground. Denial and insertion: might that sky be a wannabe destination for someone who does not know if he wants (or even where he wants) to arrive?

Countdown: we leave aside the explosive artefacts seized at customs which any day now would never explode. Let out the sniffer dogs! Alarms! Detectors! The bite of another angry animal threatens us.

This dog is not photographic, but also acts through negative paths. Ce chien ne marche pas. Ce chien marche un pas. Silent Steps is either a canine gestalt or this work is childish.
This dog is as naked as that emperor in new clothes is (funny that Silent Steps has been exhibited precisely at the Paço Imperial). Or would it be like in the cartoons (although the last one can say of the character is that his drawing is animated): when the animal shoots off, the skin stays behind. This bodyless, heartless dog that runs on the spot is merely the shell of a body. And nevertheless, it is a motor.

Just next to it they have left a little mound of salt, looking on and drying the dog meat. This dog, which is economical, leaves no marks on the ground. And nevertheless, it is a motor. That footprint in the salt is of this motor that doesn’t start. It doesn't start but it gives good chase. We are its prey, there is something there animalizing that human foot march. And this is repetition.

a trained dog on auto-pilot guides us here we go again toward the infinite blindly the sky of picture postcard white clouds and blue film there in the salt that the print left in the guarded ground of the minotaurs’ labyrinth we turn into beasts for this lack of meaning if this print is of a step where did our other foot end up?

(it’s through these repetitions that we lose our heads)

A passive and sick dog, but we are the patients.

It ended up on a crutch, a wooden leg prosthesis, which winks every now and then, right then left, breathes every now and then, systole then diastole. Just like the car in the cartoon: Brrumm-brrumm-brum. But wheels are left behind.

This time even the light is stuck. Under this domestic and artificial light our death in this dog is natural.

[Lorenzo Ghiberti, “Comentários”, 1447-55: “Nessuna cosa si vede senza la luce”]
[Heisenberg and the “principle of uncertainty”, 1927: what we perceive is not the thing in itself, but the effect of the light shining on that which we must illuminate to see. Light pushes and makes things move. There is no certainty that what we have is a reference for position or speed. There is no longer any separation between the observer and the observed world, like in the golden age of classical physics.
But what happens when what we seek to see is the actual source of the light, the natural source of natural light?]
Then we really do find ourselves in the dark.

If the time-bomb-cases smuggled from the other room have not exploded yet…
not every volcano is extinct.

(to some we should take our hats off)
(others wear the T-shirt)

Landscape-eruption (1997) is not about any old volcano. If it looks like a cake, it would be a home celebration. There is something of a Greek house feel about it, this building - or rather, this skyscraper - which is all floor plan, cross section and elevation (seen in perspective, it is exploded). Hermes sets up guard on the thresholds. Hestia at the centre of the room, where there should be a fireplace. All alight, this volcano. But, again, neither is the light natural, nor is what it carries lava. A cold light slips down these slopes.

Rest: this is not what can be said if the God is Greek, upbeat and vibration. But the fact is that the sky rests on the ground. Hermes, messenger and male, does not lead to anything, nor does he have anything to lead. Hestia, protector and female, has nothing to safeguard. Every flight (and every coitus, when wearing the T-shirt) is interrupted here because the sky of this volcano is the interruption itself. Sky of photography: revelation [interruption] expansion. What the sky of this volcano reveals is that the sky is not Olympic, and God is inferior. What the sky of this volcano expands is that the vertigo of this abysm is light indisposition. “… the finite’s incapacity to finish finishing…”

Useless, this landscape. To the devils that bear it, this volcano!

It’s for these and other reasons that this Untitled (1998)(2) double-headed coin that always shows the same face is the only one that can serve our uninterrupted negotiations with the infinite cheat (unlike the naked emperor who only exhibits the crown). Negotiations for the exchange of nothing for the sake of nothing. Under the table: a cloud that passes under the ground that passes above the sky that is passing through a cloud that passes the ground in our face. Not even that (hard!) pencil sketched ground there can pull from the hole the fallen, defaulting, craquelé sky. A game of cut-outs (of light) without folds ( ). Spurious light, artificial business: not even the greatest transparency guarantees the least liquidity.

And here too, coitus is interrupted. Not even that, because these beings of earth and air don’t copulate, don’t have sex, they hardly negotiate. They reproduce by fissiparity, which is why they are pure fissure. Sky and ground almost protozoans.

Use-less. Like a kind of switch in permanent short-circuit, positioned at ON but that turns on at OFF.

Sky and ground in a state of shock. Until we are faced by the wall with these Drawings (2000) in Braille.

Blank. But these are not drawings to be seen in the dark. Not only necessary, it is natural that some external luminosity - doggy light - guide us and lead us through these inner shadows so that they turn into rooms, entrance halls, steps of staircases, windows relatively doors, ceilings relatively floor, indicators of some clear architecture. Only then will the labyrinths have meaning and direction, and can we finally recognise that they are our pawprints, our claw-torn slashes in the ground. It’s angering: the light is artificial because it’s human, made. These drawings made of threads. It’s Ariadne’s thread that builds the labyrinth. The more paths followed by the threads, the more perfect the labyrinth is. These drawings, yes: white; but they are animated.

We are reset, with no losses. Nothing is left behind. We return to the infinite of the starting point. Albeit: of light.

Of other windows. Two. Open for the journey. Both of skin, film, and immense, relatively. But they are not crude or made of sticks (whoever does not know exactly what to do with the sky, when he does it, does it exactly).

One, Aerial Image (2001) – for Yves Klein? – could make the cloudy sky last forever: all this indigo sky is vinyl, LP matter (only, all claw-scratched, there are risks of interruption there are risks of interruption there are risks of interruption and repetition). Any “jump into the void” would never end, a body launched into space full of repetition would never break up. And even so there are still risks of us losing our heads, of losing our senses because the ground is the starting point for this vertical sky resembling the infinite resembling the ground on the horizontal. This sky with no double-sided B-side which always shows the same face is pure effect, a doing of mimicries: it is easier to see lands, seas, continents, islands, isthmuses, steps, volcanoes, erupting landscapes than the sky itself and clouds in that white-blue chameleon. All this infinite is terra firme. Infinite resembling ground because it did not know how to negotiate the heavens with the motionless sky.
It may last forever. It’s not so bad, because despite the overcast sky, the weather is good.

Another window, Natural Light (2001) – for Dan Flavin? – connects the vast out there to the “minimal” in here through a ballast. Actually, more than one, through infinite ballasts. That is why the air is rarefied, the environment is electrifying, and the dizziness a chain reaction. Here behind these bars the lack of air is more than light indisposition.
But air is precisely what is not lacking, all that is not made of sky is of air. Only the sky is precisely what is most lacking, all that is sky has been left behind in this window. With losses, naturally. Head on only this phosphorescent light shows its face. A back light, white and blue film. The photograph is the proof: this gas-filled sky is of contact and compliant. Therefore, we keep our distance: from that cold light that burns despite not being incandescent. The light is only natural when the infinite is of a candle.

2002

obs: text written for the catalog of the Luz Natural (Natural Light) exhibition, held at Galeria Cândido Portinari, UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, in January 2002

notes:
1 Maurice BLANCHOT, The Writing of the Disaster, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln/London 1992.
2 Also see Limit (2006)