From May 21 until July 2, 2016, the gallery Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico is delighted to present the new exhibition of Sergio Verastegui.


Lorenzo Benedetti, May 2016

The history of the exhibition space insisted on the idea to «isolate» the elements within it. The white clinic space that, from the second half of the XX century until now, is developing a dimension in which the elements can be separated from the rest of the world, in which the objects will be reduced to a degree zero where everything is in a new potential dimension. A potential that can reinterpretate and revitalize all sets of different things. With the fall of the frame and the transformation of the nineteenth century “salon” in “white cube” everything becomes a potential art object. Objects found traces of narrative paths where the missing parts suggest their entire size. Fragments that are looking for the rest are in a state of dynamic tension.

This dialogue between and around the fragment is clearly to find in the work of Sergio Verastegui where elements undergo processes in which their shape is derived from a fragmentation of the original. In a certain way the artist responds to this process of “isolation” to show the invisible parts like the rest of the fragment of the whole process to arrive at that particular moment.

The fragment transports with him a sense of time and is emanating a sense of the entire, but also the whole process that was bringing it there: a history. The sentence “A space is a space is a space” is referring to this process to generate different dimensions. The form of translation that the artist is doing in order to transform the space in history and connect a single object, a fragment, to a different space and time dimension.

Space as the process to find and give a history is an element that is particularly important for the work of Sergio, but especially the connection that all these elements can have with a strong use of language. The translation that is constantly used by the artist is a base for the language and its potentials.

In his works are constantly shown the relationship between the elements and the space, between the objects, their processes that generated their forms.

Everything seems to be in a sort of archive-shaped. Nothing is derived from a pure coincidence, but by a clear sequence of elements that generates new forms. In the works of Verastegui it seems to be essential that an object has a story, its path and its own specific memory.

The exhibition space is for Verastegui the place where an object can be enriched with additional elements. The exhibition is not only a visual device but a place that manages to reactivate elements that would otherwise be invisible or destined to disappear.

Layers are physically as well as metaphorically making overlapping, showing a whole grammar of possibilities to see and to hide elements. In the work of Verastegui this dynamic is evident.

A talisman, an object that has a long history, is part of this cartography of displacements. What happens in the exhibition of Sergio Verastegui is that there is a feeling to be somewhere else, in a place that is not really the exhibition space in which the show takes place. We could be in a series of spaces generated by the nature of the works that are in the show, their way to be and to be shown.

The sculptural condition in which the objects are laid and the powerless way how the canvases are hanging demonstrate this openness in the oeuvre of Verastegui in which behind the elements is hidden a source of endless histories.

Galerie Thomas Bernard-Cortex Athletico
13 rue des Arquebusiers
75003 Paris
info@galeriethomasbernard.com
+33 (0)1 75 50 42 65