Matiere Noire
Marseille (FR)

BORONDO SHOW
Marché aux puces
7.10.2017 – 31.01.2018
In collaboration with
BRBR Films, Carmen Main, Diego López Bueno, Edoardo Tresoldi, Isaac Cordal, Robberto Atzori, SBAGLIATO. Gif by A.L. Crego
Curated by
Carmen Main
Co-produced by
Gonzalo Borondo
Edoardo Tresoldi
Presented by
Galerie Saint Laurent
It smells like dust and wood. We get into the limbo of memory. An endless number of carefully carved objects tell us that there was once a time when clocks could take their time. There are mirrors of all sizes. Contained inside the glass is a heavy, sparkling history that is now coming across new eyes. I can’t stop wondering how many glances coexist in this reflection.
Within this universe of furniture, certain vessels of different cultures materialise. Sound waves lie hidden in its curvatures, words from a past life that do not reveal its secret. Hundreds of statuettes, old-time icons, have gone from being avant-garde to being memories, to discover the sound of an unstoppable metronome that seems to set the beat faster and faster. Singing of the past, voices reverberate out of magnetic tapes and interfere directly in the present. At the same time, an absent-minded listener modifies these sounds with his contemporary perception in a return trip around the collective consciousness. Meters and meters of celluloid, immortalised memories are afraid of losing their eternal nature when confronted with fire.
On 8-millimeter film, a little girl looks at her dad’s camera while she is playing in the river. The little girl is laughing and dancing. She fascinates us speaking about the unique, yet it scares us when she shows us what is unrepeatable. She draws an invisible past, without which our existence would be impossible. Dark matter of the present time.
According to cosmologists, dust, wood, mirrors, vessels, statuettes, the little girl and any other thing we can see with our eyes, or through using instruments at our disposal, are just five percent of the universe. The rest is dark energy and dark matter, a mysterious substance that reminds us just how much we do not know compared to what we know. That our perception is limited and subjective and that life would not be as it is without this mysterious and dark reality. Just as it would not be as it is if the little girl, her father, the camera or the river had not existed. Just as life anywhere in the world would be the same if all these thwarted realities at Marché aux Puces in Marseille had not taken place. Just as all the stories lying about in the market had not occurred if the rest of the universe had not been in motion. My dark matter.
A reality that is not there anymore and whose echoes are the only things I can still hear. A reality that is not mine and I do not mind, because I do not even know that it exists. A reality that I cannot touch and whose unknown nature scares me. The sleeping truth in the unconscious. The invisible. My dark matter.

PROJETER
We are living in a world of projections. Each person carries with them at least one screen, a portal to broadcast and assimilate realities that can also be used as a window, mirror or glass case. A cosmos of images and concepts appears to us through the glass for the first or the umpteenth time. We can discover the sea before even sensing the salt on our lips. Accessing the representation although we never saw the referent. Just as the slaves in the cave stared at the silhouette of the vessel reflected by the fire without knowing the flames, the clay or the emptiness. To project, according to its most basic definition, is to successfully outline an object onto another surface. Such as prehistoric times, when light was used to draw from its shadow, zoetrope or darkroom times: throughout history, humanity has sought after emulations of reality first and records of it later through painting, photography, animation or video. Thirst for immortality told through pigments, pixels or silver halide. Eternal archives of realities sleeping at flea markets or in the internet ocean, waiting to be found. Our knowledge is, however, subjective and limited. Matter is re-signified once it changes hands. Will we, therefore, be able to see something other than shadows projected by fire, when confronted by these realities?
REFLEXION
Oil painting on lightbox, glass, tv screens 240 x 240 cm
SELFIE ELVIS – Collaboration with Diego López Bueno
Closet, found pictures, painting on glass, mirror, video on loop. 4:3. Digital. Color. 14″ CRT Built-in DVD
Player Television.
CAVERNA – Collaboration with Isaac Cordal
73 Painted polyurethane resin sculptures, found objects in place, oil on plexiglass, slide projector
FLYING BALLONS IN GREAT BLUE SKY – Collaboration with Diego López Bueno
Videos that follow same characteristics: one shot, raw, uploaded a long time ago and with very few views.
CARROUSEL – Collaboration with Robberto Atzori and Carmen Main
65 Found and modified slides, carousel slide projector, found frames

PERCEVOIR
perception as the truth of lies
perception as legitimised opinion
perception as unconscious judgement
perception as projection of the past onto the present
perception as acquired fear
perception as self-interested position
perception as illusion of realities
perception as a result of training faculties perception as
synaesthesia of the present moment perception as a series of
coincidences
perception as persistent belief
perception as misinterpretation
perception as consequence of knowledge perception as
impossible certainty
perception as tireless doubt
perception as conscious dreaming
perception as reaction to the accident
perception as solace of what is relative
perception as encounter with what is creative perception as
self-deceiving
perception as limit to anthropocentrism

INTERPRÉTER
Interpreting as a way to be in the world. As a consequence of perception.
When we observe a phenomenon, we cannot detach it from our personal interpretation. The way to understand it is inevitably always subjective and unique.
In a market full of objects, furniture, films and all kinds of gadgets, there is a nickel-silver teaspoon. We do not know how many mouths it entered in Provence, whether it belonged to a family cutlery set or whether a small child used it as catapult. It was, in any case, never seen by the same eyes and it never created two identical realities. The object interfered with the lives of those who used it, just as they altered that of the spoon itself. Each experience was unique and, at the same time, built a new collective meaning.
Now, after a period of time lying around at the market, the nickel-silver falls into other hands that do not know its history but they will, however, modify it again. Matter converses with perception and of this interchange a new nuance will be born.
Interpreting becomes then a creative act and the shadow becomes light.
The market is a big black box, a creator of interpretations. A living organism conversing with the passage of time. Lights come up constantly out of its darkness. Lights that illuminate the world and modify the course of the universe, that make visible what is invisible, until one day they lose their brightness again.
Realities that will become shadows. Dark matter of the future.
To see catalogue post, click here.