Guided by the moment and her vast personal collection, and in dialogue with the architecture of Rodeo, the artist Haris Epaminonda presents the nineteenth edition of Volumes since its first conception in 2009. Taking disparate material from her collection of pottery, books, historical objects from various geographies and civilisations, she conducts an invisible ritual, a long and quiet performance.
Epaminonda identifies a relationship between space, time and matter and when all potentials have almost been exhausted, she stops. The viewer experiences this decisive moment in time, within this pause the artist has the potential to continue indefinitely. The objects close with and between themselves and they form new objects, installations composed by elements in time gone by and in the present: fabrics and drapes as well as carved wooden surfaces by contemporary artisans made under her instructions and design. Her filming practice and her masterful use of paper in collage merge in the space of the exhibition. For Epaminonda, the void is as important as the filled space.
The full moon rising from the sea of Cyprus becomes the shadow for the works on paper as well as the developed sculptures – the labyrinth – when connections become unclear and geographies merge. This group of collages is a recent series made from books of Roman and Egyptian art, juxtaposed with a black and white series of ikebana arrangements; the Portuguese text is open for free associations and interpretations, as everything else.
