Oração, Luisa Strina
curated by Ana Paula Cohen
(May 11—June 24, 2023)
Galeria Luisa Strina has the pleasure to present Oração [Sentence], the second exhibition by artist Thiago Honório (1979) in the gallery, curated by Ana Paula Cohen. In Oração, Honório occupies the space at Galeria Luisa Strina – a U or horseshoe-shaped gallery based on the ground floor of a commercial building on Padre João Manuel Street, number 755, in São Paulo – taking into account both the architectural body and the movement of the spectator’s body in its interior, by assuming the form of a text, or a sentence, a linguistic ensemble structured around a verb. In the experience of Oração, the works are spread throughout the gallery space as graphic symbols, commas and stellar points, which take over the architecture as text.
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Text means tissue; but whereas hitherto we have always taken this tissue as a product, a ready-made veil, behind which lies more or less hidden, a meaning (truth), we are now emphasizing, in the tissue, the generative idea that the text is made, is worked out in a perpetual interweaving: lost in this tissue – this texture – the subject unmakes himself, like a spider dissolving in the constructive secretions of its webs. Were we fond of neologisms, we might define the theory of the text as an hyphology (hyphos is the fabric and web of a spider)*.
From this notion of text, a sentence** is conceived of as a syntactic component, a coordinate or subordinate clause, usually accompanied by a verb, and also a litany, a form of meditation, prayer, a liturgical invocation enunciated at canonical times or during mass, as speech; or a set of words put together according to grammatical norms, a proposition, an expression, a declaration.
In the trajectory proposed by Oração, we glimpse a fractured narrative, both fragmented and suspended, marked by hiatuses, intervals, cuts, voids and silences. Taking into account the architectural plan of Galeria Luisa Strina, the notion of the exhibition plan acquires new meanings translated into elements seen in the works: a branch of cotton, the rosary’s rose, the garden stake, the shoot or sprout, the floor plan, the design, the map, the diagram, the footprint.
The show is conceived of as a sort of mesh and also as an exhibition-procession. In July, it will unfold into Texto [Text], an event taking place at the Morumbi Chapel in São Paulo.
* Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, 1973, translated by Richard Miller.
** Translator’s note. In Portuguese, the word Oração means both sentence/clause and prayer/litany.
WORKs
Texto, 2020-2023
Oração, 2018-2023
Vista, 2020-2023
Leituras, 2015-2018
Trama, 1997-2023
Ofertório, 2013-2021
Corte, 2021-2023
textsProcessional Exhibition in Two Acts: Oração and Texto, Ana Paula Cohen