Till we have faces

This text emerged under hypnosis. I now find myself in a mirrored ground plan that has the air of a time-worn temple. In several places, the remnants of rituals. There, a blocked portal; behind a corner, walls bricked up. Somewhere a belly bursts out of its coat and takes a deep breath. First, I turn around. It’s burning my eyes. Like the Trinity, a red onion floats positively weightless in a virtual space. It presents itself from the front, from behind and in the middle, cut open. Seeming to exist in multiple states at once. Exuding sulphur dioxide, the view is distorted. A little further, slightly bloated, glowing strokes. Electrified frocks or robes rear up be- fore me. Lined up in a vertical formation. Faces missing, heads jutting out beyond the picture’s frame. Punched out of a bigger structure. Figures of concave curvature become distend- ed, disembodied husks, about to dissolve into their own reflections along a horizontal line. Headlessly they gesticulate, casting my gaze to and fro as they do. Solid signs blur into abstrac- tions, forming anarchic lines far from all forms of intelligibility. The pictures’ frames soften, flow along the roughened temple walls, drip out of the familiar form. In the fluidity of painting, I float on and bump into an object, coated in woven stone. Proud and sublime, it reminds me of an agent. She stands angular in space, she has swallowed her own head, just doesn’t need it anymore. Too big for the rigid corset, she’s on the brink of bursting out, she stretches up out of the horizontality of the space, like a diamond rising to great heights. With her dried out, once moist layers, the agent is of the same species as the onion: they come across similar in aura. They want to negotiate something; they impel me to come closer. I have to duck down, looking behind a torn- open coat onto a polished surface, see my own reflection: now I am doubled. Realising then, however, that that’s not me, but an organic sign of my self. Slightly blurred, this likeness flickers on the belly of the agent. An interim setting is formed before raw plastered walls and fantas- tical trees. Horses wade through the water and keep on stirring up the calm surface. Turning around, the picture disappears with me. So it is that I see certain scenarios only once, in a most particular state, like a tableau vivant that exists entirely for itself, far from my presence, and which goes on producing images indefinitely, without me there. As semiotic instruments, the objects seem to stand in a kind of reciprocal secrecy with the space and the paintings. The heads and faces have disappeared, they provide no moment of pause, they refuse to perform. In a conspiratori- al manner, they have stepped out of the images, left the constructs. Observing me, perhaps from a safe distance. Or they have long since melted into a collective juice that trickles between my feet, shakes me where I’m standing, carries me off and continues to dissolve me, always bit by bit. Exhibition Text (EN) By Laura Hinrichsmeyer Translated by Miriam Stoney