All of the items here are unnamed; I need an environment where I can breathe, and think, and move about more freely.
They are without dates or chronological order; I have to find a landscape to protect me from the brutality of the world.
This exhibition, which also doesn’t have a title, is a regrouping, a reimagining of sorts; I like to start by casting everything in doubt.
It is a restaging of Fernanda Gomes’s oeuvre; I love that moment of going into an empty space and starting to move around and around, letting my imagination go.
Like Robert Ryman, she prefers to work in white; the panes have cracks and scratches, the unworked side is black and blank and as opaque, the other a consortium of whites.
She incorporates these imperfections into her work; these sides are joined together by a hinge.
Like Carl Andre and Blinky Palermo, she picks up objects from the street and she composes them; I like to mix abstract forms with common objects: chairs and tables, books, a box of matches, strands of hair, a number of other unclassifiable composites.
She creates an atmosphere, a surreal domestic space; it is a space cluttered with stuff.
I have a mind for the essential objects; when I really started doing, what I consider is a language, it was white.
Method is a discipline of life; it means steering clear of the coarser side of things, doing less with the stupid and the bureaucratic.
I compose without any method or effort; pleasure is my guide.
A pedestal can become a sculpture; a painting can become an object.
If I don’t feel like doing something, I don’t do it; I prefer working to going out.
The word ‘work’ is inappropriate; words are never, and always they are falling short, enough.
The idea of repetition is a part of this; the most basic kind of everyday activities have inspired what I’ve done from the beginning.
I carry on as if it is the same, always it’s the same; it is always different and unfinished.
I open up different directions without closing any of them; I keep everything at my disposal, different things all at the same time.
I keep a lot of stuff, looking at it over years; I like using everything.
Distance in time also creates a critical distance; I live a continuity of times.
I let go as much as I can; I imagine a whole load of ramifications, but I do not carry on.
The main cycle is the day: morning, afternoon, evening, night; one day follows another and repetition heightens nuance.
I like to let things happen and carry on without trying to control them too much; I often think of doing one thing and end up doing something else.
Things catch my attention when I’m out or I’m at home; apparently meaningless things kindle completely unexpected sparks.
I always have different notebooks: one inside my bag, bigger ones at home, specific ones for an exhibition; I’ve always, since I was a child, been in movement.
I like doing things little by little; I like doing things gradually, letting them add up, creating more organic structures.
A constant in my work is looking at things; I respect the things I see and let them guide me.
I like to have lots of work around me; it’s like a materialized thought process.
I start imagining different possibilities and I work them out; I take note of what I’m doing, some of which I follow, some of which I then forget.
I find myself in a state of total awareness; it’s about balance.
It’s the unexpected plus imagination, that’s what it is; it’s the idea of using what I can immediately access, putting discarded items back to work, recovering, preserving them.
And it all evades our verbal language, our descriptions, in favor of a different kind of poetry; it’s free.
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