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Sunday, November 15, 2015

R.H. Quaytman at Miguel Abreu

R.H. Quaytman at Miguel Abreu
(link)

Miguel Abreu surrounds itself in a very distinct aura, it desires so strongly to be fictional literature, like a Borges labyrinth, where fiction is made to feel real, and the library the realest of all, from which entire worlds stem. Not even that Quaytman chapters her work, all the exhibitions feel like arcana and leaden magic where complexity's turgidity make it feel all the more real for its almost bureaucratic commitment to the fiction.  This PR treats us to the tale of a painter chasing an engraving that a philosopher loved so much to own inspiring a much loved passage of text, finding upon finally seeing the work, that something was hidden behind the print, a whole other world, but the thing couldn't be spliced and x-rays couldn't reveal, and this painter, Quaytman, poured over databases and archives dedicating herself to the task of attributing this engraving behind the engraving, a man in black robes. Eventually it is found not from obsessive pouring, but instead "a little luck." And the painter produces a whole new appendix to the chapter about the discovery revealing "an answer that does not satisfy so much as add complexity and mystery to this icon of ideology." Of course its just a google search away, but the point of the Borges story is would you want it revealed?