Galeria Carlos Carvalho, Lisboa
15.05 to 14.06.2014
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| © Galeria Carlos Carvalho |
Thinking the
non-stratified with Sergio
Costa’s >Strata<
By following a Minerva’s flight of wonder in Costa’s
experimental >strata< series, we follow a form of artistic
experimentation on strata as archive of captured nature in which we are invited to deviate from geological
principles such as >original horizontality< in which sedimentary rock
strata are supposed to form in horizontal positions. >Strata< question
horizontally layered archives of reality. In
Sérgio Costa’s series Strata we are given a new diagramming strategy of art not
only by the means of painting but as well by changes of dimension in strata
experiments from 2012 onwards introducing a fragmentary map principle in Strata
#15 and an anaglyphic principle in Strata #19, #20, #21 as shown first in the Geological Museum of Lisbon (5th
of April to 3rd of May 2014) and now in his exhibition – linked to
the shortlist of the Arte Laguna prize
[Venice 2014] in May-June 2014 at the gallery Carlos Carvalho. Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon (14.5-4.6.2014),
Portugal.
*
Strata come at least in a pair, in a double bound or in multiple layers.
One stratum therefore serves the others as a “substratum”(Deleuze/ Guattari, A thousand Plateaus) -and one might
add- as double pinchers of a lobster (Deleuze/ Guattari’s image of strata) or
as earthly rock layers, or atmospheric strata as well the stratified peel of an
onion. Strata-layers can be rigid or twisted, elastic or tense; in any case
strata move, can be moved and are not timeless, but on the contrary, even that
we as humans might observe them as relatively stabile, strata are already part of a time lag and a local shift, as are
strata of experiences, or as we call them here: attentional strata that Sergio
Costa develops.
Strata appear not necessarily as rock layers and stratification
does not equal horizontal petrifaction, but >strata< can - as in the image sujet of Sérgio Costa’s paintings-
show up as layers of rock- not only densified by pressure, and broken up-
refolded or transformed into maps, smoke, clay and even exhumed dust of decaying
proto-objects.
*
Strata appear as layers of two images on the two sides of an interstice line. The interstice line
often orients us in Sergio Costa’s Strata paintings, and as such lets us
discover his work as maps of unknown or
anonymous materials in the observation of which we gain a certain complicity and that we in a first necessary
“disillusive moment” identify with rock. However, Costa’s work is a meditations
on the virtualization of our (visible) and touchable supposedly stable and firm
reality. It is therefore not merely a matter of deciding, whether the Strata-maps are
indexical or related with a material object (the territory of the painting) or
whether it is the “territory itself”, index
sui, pointing at itself. The getting
visible of strata grids becomes a technique
and strategy of orientation in Strata #15, #17, #18 a series of three Strata oil
paintings that come close to the former principle of Costa’s work on “Sampling
puzzles” in order to create maps to orient in an ungrounded world.
*
In its majority the oil on canvas/linen >Strata< paintings are
composed of at least two strata or layers that we perceptually unify habitually
at first sight- the exception hereby are >Strata< #5 and anaglyphic
Strata #19, #20, #21 that seem to convey a unity of the image, however one has
to remember that the >Strata [#1]< is missing and as such a first
strata or grounding of reality in Sergio Costa confronts us with the anti-foundationalist
multiplicity of >strata< and his artistic strategy of destratification. Therefore the line in
between the two layers of the image are sometimes more (#2, #6, #8-11, #13-14,
#16) sometimes less (#3, #4, #7, #12) visible interstice lines between two parts depicting stratified calcium
formations on the oil painting, leading us to a geo-philosophical reflection on
strata in the tradition of Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze or recently Negarestani.
*
Strata#15 de-stratify not only the rest of the painting
series before and after number 15.
This means: >Strata #15< shows other strata not only as rests of maps,
but Strata#15 also shifts our attention towards the fact that strata in the
sense of Sérgio Costa are foremost maps, and as such would be better studied - not
in the science of geography or geology- but “in painting” -as Deleuze famously
claimed in his small and precious text “What Children say”. Strata #15 is an
excellent way to study painting as map-making- a temporarily orienting strategy
in time, space and affective intensity- and all of it still in the making.
The closer one
gets to Costa’s >Strata< the more the process view of painting as
map-creation becomes visible, the more far the observer distances herself from
the >Strata<, the more virtual the surface of Costa’s art in general
becomes. >Strata 15< is also the place where Costa’s >strata< are openly
stratified formations and map at the same time, ruler and pencil, hand and
thought, breath and rhythm., all on the surface. Thus >Strata< #15
invites us to go beyond the possibilities we always imagined things to be in
their historical stratified forms and methods- and in relation to our lives.
Sergio Cost’s >Strata< ask us:
How do we orient in between and above strata?
How do we orient ourselves in between and above what we always thought was
stable, fixed, grounded, or based on scientific facts and principles?
*
There is another important new
dimension in this series of >Strata< from 2013-2014 starting with
underdetermined proto-amorphous things: The forming of mesh of clay and the
drying of the wet mesh through which its porosity appears in Strata #20 and
#21, exhibited in a showcase before we had entered the exhibition space at the
Geological Museum. And even after transporting these frail underdetermined
things into the realm of painting, in which we can see them as paradoxes
(simultaneously a proto-brain slice or/and a slice of petrified toasted bread)
our imagination while observing these >things< is unlimited in a trivial
matching game of similarity. The concreteness of these sub-(jectival) objects
brings us further due to its contextual embeddings and transport into the realm
of a museum space, the geological museum, in the building of the Portuguese
Academy of Sciences. Strata of Sergio Costa turn into a “real counterpart”, a
virtual syncope of petrified objects, first conceptually exhibited in the Lisbon
Museum of Geology in the building of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences, an
artistic principle of ungrounding and
virtualization of the material Museum
space and its displayed objects, and the putting into question of scientific
grounding or the “un-changeability” of scientific laws and orthodox orders.
*
In >Strata< #20 and #21 the porosity that is an
openness of craters and valleys unlike its geological counterpart of
sedimentation can be put into perspective as artistic strategy opposed to an
geological sedimentation principle of stratification. Costa´s >Strata<
exhume the fixity of our habitual perception of things and thus strata as rock
layers start decomposing, while not even the most hard rock on which religions
belief to be build, escapes this virtualizing
principle of de-stratification or ungrounding.
By the introduction of new anaglyphic works of strata, Sergio Costa can now be
seen in 3D, without any need to go to a multiplex cinema- the cinematic
anaglyphic mode in 2014 reached the geological museum, it catapults the
observer to a nature 2.0. The more the observer seems to recover in this
optical illusion the “original” 3D structure of the object in study, in a
“regrounding” of reality, the more he tries to root them on a platonic plane,
the more >strata< virtualize and ungrounds.
Lisbon, 17 of April 2014
from the upcoming book:
Alexander Gerner (2014). Strata. Sérgio
Costa. Books on Demand: Norderstedt
Alexander Gerner is a German researcher
in philosophy based in Lisbon. He is member of the CFCUL at the University of
Lisbon with his project http://cognitiveenhancement.weebly.com/
His work is supported by a Post-Doc grant
by the FCT foundation: SFRH/BPD/90360/2012
