Are we all
Museums
of Fear?
Without actually providing us with a solution or a stabilised form, the answer to Are We All Museums of Fear? – the first part of an exhibition trilogy, which will be followed, at other venues, by All Animals Are Bad, All of Them are a Meal Away from Barbarity and And When I Die I Won’t Stay Dead – is an open scenario, palimpsestic, fragmentary and visceral, which Filipe Marques seeks to confront us with. The phrase was stolen from Charles Bukowski, who uttered it in his disparaged but incisive Poem for Nobody; Filipe Marques inverts the statement into the form of a question, yet not without first removing from it the hallmark (as it is in the poet), symptom and origin of a profound intuition: sharp, sincere and clear-sighted. Because even if the question is raised as a way of thrusting us directly into the inner movement of this exhibition – and thus making us also its agents – no acquiescence is expected on our part. We find ourselves, with Filipe Marques, faced with the clear evidence, although we may not think so: we are all museums of fear. But then, what kind of fear is this? It might seem to us to be excessive, perhaps overly fatalistic, were this not a primitive, original, elemental and constituent fear – the fear that Filipe Marques seeks to talk to us about. A fear that lives with us, as the poet Reinaldo Ferreira was to say through the voice of Amália. A fear that all animals feel – which is why they attack (a thought that I took from the dialogues of Batman Begins, by Christopher Nolan). Contemporary mythifications, my own, which apparently contrast with an imaginary that tends towards the classical. It is this same imagery that is brought into play at this exhibition and which, furthermore, is a fundamental component of all of the artist’s work. However, this imagery is not convoked as a result of a self-absorbed, vain or even inconsequential erudition. It continues to be an integral part of a path that, for Filipe Marques, is as much a personal and autobiographical component of his identity as it is an intellectual, ethical and artistic exercise, appearing here as testamentary manifestations – sensitive signs – of a fear that is, in essence, very ancient. And which forever condemns us. Loss, death, forgetfulness – that is our constant and our prime tragedy. Based on a talk given by the Portuguese thinker Maria Filomena Molder (and which, thanks to an appropriative gesture, we can follow in the film that is shown on the gallery’s lower floor), Are We All Museums of Fear? is therefore related to the distant, immemorial and compulsive movement of that tragedy. A source of uninterrupted battles, which are never settled, never won, producing the most infinite images and consequences, inexhaustible violence, all kinds of suffering and terror. And if, as others have said about Filipe Marques’ work, the artist is constantly operating between different temporalities – mythical, psychological and historical – this exhibition undoubtedly confirms that impression. Filipe Marques’ virtue – both as a person and as an artist – is precisely that he makes us aware – materially, visually and audibly – of what may be the unconscious basis by which history (at least in the west) has been governed. And thus, we can note all of its perfidious and morbid fantasies, unfounded duels, all of its unperceived messes, remains and manipulatory gestures. At this museum, to which the artist also belongs, and which is simultaneously both completely and not at all banal, Filipe Marques shows us what lies behind all our apparently solar edifications, behind all the masks with which we have continuously covered ourselves, certainly created under the auspices of fear: an unending dialectic between flesh and body, pleasure and wound, ecstasy and ascension, tumult and order, life and death. Between the Earth and human law. In this way, he highlights everything profane (as its double – as a mirror) existing in the realm of the sacred (the many sacred things that we use as a protection and as a mask). It is the same as saying: all the materialities that, belonging to the untimely world of reality, burst mercilessly forth, through the domain of the symbolic, even if this is always seeking to stop them from emerging. Yet, there is no redeeming vision in all of this. There is no “grace”, just as there was none with Bukowski. Nor is there any opposing impulse of resignation. There is, instead, boldness – and resistance. Because, as Filipe Marques knows, the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann never ceases to be played – never ceases to touch us. And, day after day, to carry us with it.
David Revés
Translated by John Elliott
Are we all
Museums
of Fear?
Without actually providing us with a solution or a stabilised form, the answer to Are We All Museums of Fear? – the first part of an exhibition trilogy, which will be followed, at other venues, by All Animals Are Bad, All of Them are a Meal Away from Barbarity and And When I Die I Won’t Stay Dead – is an open scenario, palimpsestic, fragmentary and visceral, which Filipe Marques seeks to confront us with. The phrase was stolen from Charles Bukowski, who uttered it in his disparaged but incisive Poem for Nobody; Filipe Marques inverts the statement into the form of a question, yet not without first removing from it the hallmark (as it is in the poet), symptom and origin of a profound intuition: sharp, sincere and clear-sighted. Because even if the question is raised as a way of thrusting us directly into the inner movement of this exhibition – and thus making us also its agents – no acquiescence is expected on our part. We find ourselves, with Filipe Marques, faced with the clear evidence, although we may not think so: we are all museums of fear. But then, what kind of fear is this? It might seem to us to be excessive, perhaps overly fatalistic, were this not a primitive, original, elemental and constituent fear – the fear that Filipe Marques seeks to talk to us about. A fear that lives with us, as the poet Reinaldo Ferreira was to say through the voice of Amália. A fear that all animals feel – which is why they attack (a thought that I took from the dialogues of Batman Begins, by Christopher Nolan). Contemporary mythifications, my own, which apparently contrast with an imaginary that tends towards the classical. It is this same imagery that is brought into play at this exhibition and which, furthermore, is a fundamental component of all of the artist’s work. However, this imagery is not convoked as a result of a self-absorbed, vain or even inconsequential erudition. It continues to be an integral part of a path that, for Filipe Marques, is as much a personal and autobiographical component of his identity as it is an intellectual, ethical and artistic exercise, appearing here as testamentary manifestations – sensitive signs – of a fear that is, in essence, very ancient. And which forever condemns us. Loss, death, forgetfulness – that is our constant and our prime tragedy. Based on a talk given by the Portuguese thinker Maria Filomena Molder (and which, thanks to an appropriative gesture, we can follow in the film that is shown on the gallery’s lower floor), Are We All Museums of Fear? is therefore related to the distant, immemorial and compulsive movement of that tragedy. A source of uninterrupted battles, which are never settled, never won, producing the most infinite images and consequences, inexhaustible violence, all kinds of suffering and terror. And if, as others have said about Filipe Marques’ work, the artist is constantly operating between different temporalities – mythical, psychological and historical – this exhibition undoubtedly confirms that impression. Filipe Marques’ virtue – both as a person and as an artist – is precisely that he makes us aware – materially, visually and audibly – of what may be the unconscious basis by which history (at least in the west) has been governed. And thus, we can note all of its perfidious and morbid fantasies, unfounded duels, all of its unperceived messes, remains and manipulatory gestures. At this museum, to which the artist also belongs, and which is simultaneously both completely and not at all banal, Filipe Marques shows us what lies behind all our apparently solar edifications, behind all the masks with which we have continuously covered ourselves, certainly created under the auspices of fear: an unending dialectic between flesh and body, pleasure and wound, ecstasy and ascension, tumult and order, life and death. Between the Earth and human law. In this way, he highlights everything profane (as its double – as a mirror) existing in the realm of the sacred (the many sacred things that we use as a protection and as a mask). It is the same as saying: all the materialities that, belonging to the untimely world of reality, burst mercilessly forth, through the domain of the symbolic, even if this is always seeking to stop them from emerging. Yet, there is no redeeming vision in all of this. There is no “grace”, just as there was none with Bukowski. Nor is there any opposing impulse of resignation. There is, instead, boldness – and resistance. Because, as Filipe Marques knows, the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann never ceases to be played – never ceases to touch us. And, day after day, to carry us with it.
David Revés
Translated by John Elliott
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