The Unstable Hour
21.09.2019
21.12.2019
I.1. The hour of total possibility
From the cellular instability to the human gatherings, the transitory character of the matter manifests itself implacably at the core of things. Its compulsory fate is the sign of the infinite cycles of dismantling and uprisings. From the lights of the day and from the shedding of the animals’ skin to the marches in debacle of societies and civilizations, that is it, all the time. What is left for us is the perception of the phenomena, which causes the variations on how we feel the temperature. In aspiring to the earthly balm, we stand at the mercy of the species’ will and cling to security, conservatism, the air conditioner and every anesthetic that disguises life. Nonetheless, even in the most boring decades or afternoons, as on a Thursday at 3 o’clock, a threshold-condition might break out, which can move us to the point of the unbinding of time itself. The absolute moment, the total instant, which we must call the unstable hour. The state of presence, the ultra-now. That’s when the essence of intention, the primary gesture that does not say anything apart from its very capacity to speak. That’s when we take note of the vital pulsation, which opens up, decisively, the enigma of experience. The ascent that gives rise to the paroxysm, the tension-limit that makes the eruption of the Demiurge recognizable. The time when everything can be.
I.2. The individual on the edge, the capital situation
There is only life at the limit, under radical ecstasy. When what is eccentric to the flesh is felt through excess; taken wholly by an emergence capable of bringing the ethereal thrill to surface, mobilizing everything to its extreme potential. Any other speed that does not make the transformation point come into sight, is only an anodyne simulation of the substance that nurtures the phenomenon at its most primitive character. The combustion in the accesses and insurgencies fills the lungs, runs through the joints, goes up the spine, hits the head. Libidinal pinnacle that commands sensitive visceral alterations, blood perfusions, hormonal and digestive secretions’ liberations. The abysmal élan that outrages, defines the path, shuffles the game, cuts heads off, overthrows empires and fuses metals together. It’s in the creak of craving, on the sweat that drips from the temple, in the sound of the trumpets leading the vanguards. It’s on the sharp knife that carves the cheese with precision, on the wrist deflected at a chin, on the breathing that thrusts the asceticism and the intercourses, at the onset of friendships and enmities, in the big arrangements and landslides. In the throat of the first cockerel that wakes up, in the outbreak of someone who ascends, in the rhapsody of the crowd taking over the streets. When the flowing energy reaches a certain degree of heating, and the encounter, the friction, is such that any structure is at risk of collapsing, of falling apart. It is what can burst forth at any time, anywhere.
I.3. Trances at the end of the world
At the contingency of the hour, the apocalypse makes a turn. The signs of time are not few nor bland. In the colossus affixed to daily life, information is created, enlarged, jostled in an incessant multitude whose juxtaposition feverishly outflows, liquid and gasping at the four corners of the world. The accumulation of techniques, the infinite stacking up, the ongoing miseries… The algorithms, like the lead, enigmatic, solid or fluid, floating above us all. Between the soil’s deep perforation and sidereal speculation, the macabre appearance of large-scale disasters at their most terrible renderings, and likewise, the new bodies that forge in the fury of desires, which now, more than ever, but as always, take their rightful place on the surface. What was once only heard as a sultry sound, now bites the common language in the jugular. Mysticism manifests itself at every piece of the sidewalk, even at the dawn of the codes and gadgets that allow the uncountable exchanges, in microseconds, of so many commodities, ideas and values in evermore abstract terms. Legs, arms, prostheses, surgeries, hormone administration and all the while facing the white, blinding light of the exoeconomy. All the best drugs and all kinds of services. Ambiguities crack piercingly, in a hurried metallic chiaroscuro. Under the aesthetic of the acceleration that involves us, the most radical trances must burn. As in the end of a vertiginous sprint that has just consumed all of our power: the sight is off and the chest blazes while we are still shaken by inertia. Suddenly, in a most spontaneous movement, the neck jolts backwards only so we contemplate, eyes to the fullest, above.
Germano Dushá
- Ana Matheus Abbade
- Bruno Cidra
- Daniel de Paula
- Deyson Gilbert
- Renata de Bonis
- Lais Myrrha
- Marcelo Cidade
- Maria Noujaim
- Nicolás Robbio
- Nina Botkay
- Paulo Monteiro
- Daniel de Paula
- Deyson Gilbert
- Ana Matheus Abbade
- Maria Noujaim
- Lais Myrrha
- Nina Botkay
- Paulo Monteiro
- Renata de Bonis

The Unstable Hour
Exhibition view

The Unstable Hour
Exhibition view

Paulo Monteiro
Untitled
2018
58,5 x 21 x 9 cm
Aluminium
Edition: 1/2

Renata de Bonis
Talingstraat 5, Rotterdam
2019
230 x 140 cm
Cyanotype on cotton and metal structure

Marcelo Cidade
Expansion by Subtraction (Le Corbusier)
2018
335 x 760 cm
Glass shards mounted on wall

Marcelo Cidade
Expansion by Subtraction (Le Corbusier) (detail)
2018
335 x 760 cm
Glass shards mounted on wall

The Unstable Hour
Exhibition view

Maria Noujaim
Spin
2017
240 x 200 cm
Vinyl on wall

Maria Noujaim
Spin
2017
Vinyl: 240 x 200 cm
Duration: 3 cycles of 20 minutes with regular pauses between each cycle
Vinyl on wall and performance

The Unstable Hour
Exhibition view

Paulo Monteiro
Untitled
2017
16 x 14,5 x 7,5 cm
Iron
Edition: 2/3

Paulo Monteiro
Untitled
2017
26 x 16,5 x 5,5 cm
Iron
Edition: 2/3

Ana Matheus Abbade
Jump
2016
02’42”
Video
Edition: 1/3 + AP

Nicolás Robbio
Tune #9
2018
210 x 155 cm
Nylon rope, pulleys, screws and counterweights

Daniel de Paula
stractum
2018-2019
160 x 10 cm
Geological core samples resulting from geotechnical surveys executed for public works of energy generation structures, tubular scaffold, sleeve couplers, and adjustable scaffold pedestal

Bruno Cidra
Untitled #10
2019
Variable dimensions
Bronze and paper

Renata de Bonis
Bell jar (2,08m)
2019
Variable dimensions
Plastic cup and dead insect found in an art exhibition and installed on the wall at the maximum height that the artist reaches

Deyson Gilbert
Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua
2019
Variable dimensions
Magnet, image with Jânio Quadros’ (former president of Brazil) photography detail, nail and nylon thread

Deyson Gilbert
Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua
2019
Variable dimensions
Magnet, image with Jânio Quadros’ (former president of Brazil) photography detail, nail and nylon thread

Lais Myrrha
The Interminable Instant
2015
13’45”
Video
Edition: 3/5

Nina Botkay
The point, the shock, the diagonal
2019
Performance