Juli Susin, VIOLENT NOON (Mediodía violento) – Asunción
10/01/2014
Tekoha and Royal Book Lodge with support from the Instituto Cultural Paraguayo Alemán present :
VIOLENT NOON (Mediodía violento)
Juli Susin exhibition
Curator : Adriana Almada
For Capitan Pinturas :
André Butzer, Sara Glaxia, Andy Hope 1930, Jonathan Meese, Jean-Louis Leibovich, Anne Lefebvre.
Video editing : Ara Yegros
Clock animation : Lucia Sotnikova
Etching : Marcos Benitez
Documentation bus 31 : Raisa Aid
Production assistant : Tera Yegros et Lilas Carpentier
Thanks to Gilles et Annick Bienvenus, Lucy Yegros, Angel Yegros.
EL OJO SALVAJE
Fundación Migliorisi
September 24th – October 24th 2014
Grabadores del Cabichu’i entre Cañada y Emeterio Miranda
Asunción, Paraguay
“I believe in … the fear of calendars, the treachery of clocks…” JG Ballard
Violent Noon takes its title from a text by J. G. Ballard and revolves around two of Juli Susin’s obsessions: time and the concept of the book. Or rather, around the book as the decoder of temporal enclaves, as a password for enciphering and deciphering stories where reality and fiction merge in the experience of the journey. In the same way, Susin’s various journeys to Paraguay gradually traced, not without hazard, the diagram of this exhibition.
The nucleus of the work is a psychological test for criminals used in the United States at the end of 1940s. It involves a small red suitcase, bought in a flea market, which opens to release a series of characters who can be placed in different situations and/or scenarios, some being originals from the kit and others that Susin himself has drawn, painted and cut out. The pieces are interchangeable, so that anyone can make his/her own “reconstruction of the events”. From this small Theatrum Mundi, emerges Capitán Pinturas, Bus 31, Time Master, Univers Tekoha, El General, Itá Karú, Akzia Bororo, Le Parfum and many others.
Around this nucleus, a clock that sets time adrift, the footprints of invisible beings, the real traces of an imaginary artist and stills from a 1970s’ Czech film which locates the panacea for a terrible ill afflicting the planet in Paraguay. One of the works carries the signature of three artists, invited by Susin (Andy Hope 1930, André Butzer and Jonathan Meese), thus evading limitations of authorship and discipline. The result is a time-exposure of pieces of evidence that act as molecules of memory, of a blinding light that spills out in the violent tropical noon.
Adriana Almada
Translation : Christina MacSweeney