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Pari passu, 2011


                                                                                                       
               
               Diptych consisting of two braids of skin affixed with shiny chrome pins and each having a goat's foot at the end. The set is screwed onto corbels made of cut and varnished dark wood that bear engraved plaques. Part of the material used, in this case the chrome pins, was found in the Marché aux Puces, in Saint-Ouen, Porte de Clignancourt, a large flea market located the suburbs of Paris.

              The braided skins were attached to the goat's feet. I decided that the wood used as a fixing support in the making of Pari passu should be meticulously sanded and varnished and have a tone that is not entirely homogeneous, but darker, in order to contrast with the texture and ocher tone of the animal skins and paws.

              I chose to make methacrylate plates in black – unlike the engraved gold plates that I used in other previous works – as these should not compete with the chrome shine of the silver pins that would emerge from the set.

              The composition of Pari passu refers, through the evident intertwining, to a mismatch and a deviation. Such deviation is marked by difference, signaled both by the different nuances of skin and the amount of fur in each of the braids, as well as by the paws used and, above all, by the marking in the Roman numerals LXXI and VIII engraved on each of the plates.

              This mismatch identified in the braids becomes more evident since the cut wooden supports, the chrome pins and the methacrylate plates are identical and the organic elements – skins and paws – are unique, singular, different, as are the engraved numbers on each of the plates.

             The plates, as a cataloging procedure, indicate, in the solemn arrangement of this intertwining, the marking of a step elsewhere. The decision on the numbers that would mark each of the plaques was partially arbitrary. It was essential that they not suggest a linear or evolutionary sequence, a development per se; but rather that they were randomly distanced from each other with regard to a presupposed numerical chain. Pari passu invokes the marking of steps elsewhere in which there is no repetition, nor the suggestion of development. Initially I thought about engraving the word pari on one of the plaques and passu on the other. I imagined that, by breaking down the expression, a certain deviation would be highlighted. I even carried out tests on black methacrylate plates and the result, in my opinion, was not as striking as the marking with Roman numerals, whose emphasis on numerical deviation, contrary to a linked sequence, seemed to meet a certain imbalance that the work was looking for.

               Something that also caught my attention in the assembly of the skins, whose interweaving already denotes the presence of slits and openings, was the mimicry of this element marked by the split in the design of each of the small paws.

             Pari passu is a very intimate work, at once austere and discreet, placed alone on a generous wall, so that it gains scale through contrast. It is an arrangement that alludes to numerous juxtaposition and editing procedures identified in previous works and that seems to speak of marking, rhythm, precisely through the mismatch, the deviation. The static dimension of the intertwined set of skins in Pari passu may allude to an impossible pas-de-deux.

Thiago Honório, November 2010.