Pausing a Tremor: TRIPZITTER by Fabien Ramírez

Fabian Ramírez presents his most recent work at the gallery Daniela Elbahara, as curated by Luis Hampshire. The exhibition displays paintings and ceramic sculptures that are expanded by means of interventions in the space and peculiar gestures in the installation. From a first glance, we find a vast array of textures and visual planes. There are areas in which a certain intentionality can be distinguished and others in which only materiality manifests itself. The variety of plastic stimuli easily frustrates the search for a single statement.

Instead of starting out from a reticulated spatial reading that locates the objects in the those places most comfortable to the eye, the distribution seems to be the consequence of different forces passing through the works themselves. Several of them suggest continuous flows of energy, while others produce bursts and still others seem to be waste: traces of an already-realized transformation. The flows, the bursts, and the traces respond to very different spatiotemporal logics. If they coexist in the exhibition, it is likely because a pause has been forced on them. The gaze wavers between curiosity and confusion as it goes through these halted processes; it’s difficult to see what will happen if they are reactivated.

The curatorial text explains that the title comes from combining two terms: tripsitter, someone who cares for or accompanies another on a psychedelic trip, and zittern, German for trembling. On the course towards configuring this new term’s meaning, we have the opportunity for digression. Is trembling a way of traveling? Is traveling a way of trembling? The exhibition insists on presenting a strange and inhospitable threshold in which matter and concept are unstable. Even the flowers that timorously peep out of some of the paintings are threatened by abstraction. In this pictorial ecosystem, setting out the transformation of matter appears, simultaneously, to imply its destruction.

There are other aspects of the work that add tension to the ecosystem. Some of the pictures, for example, are supported by rocks on the floor and are placed leaning against the wall. This decision grants an additional mode of presence to the pictures, requiring consideration of their internal logic: that is, their relation with the wall, as an image, and with their separation from it, as a space. It also happens that in a pictorial diptych and in a sculpture, reminiscent of a stele, the volumes’ flat shape is interrupted by firm cuts, fragmenting their surface and producing a sense of assemblage. The correspondence between two parts of the same piece is opposed to the different moments of dispersion in which they are immersed. So, do all these elements in suspended recomposition tend towards chaos or toward order? It is impossible to avoid vertigo.

What stand out are the tumultuous ceramic objects scattered throughout the exhibition. I choose to speculate about them and provide them with an organic nature, as they are the only entities apparently capable of moving between the different planes of this particular environment. They are protected by a shiny layer that reconciles the voracious interaction of color with the capricious cavities of matter. Their shine allows them to resist the mattifying effect that has halted everything else. Perhaps they breathe at an imperceptible rate.

In general, the show’s hyperreflexivity complicates its digestion. Although the motif of psychedelia can guide a first approach, the body is easily overwhelmed by the layers of reading that we find hinted at everywhere. It’s not that there’s an error in wagering on the superimposition of such layers, but rather that the metabolic demand is high and could not materialize. In any case, one can choose to tour the exhibition with a gaze that advances cautiously and that glides over those frozen forces, all while having fun.

TRIPZITTER is an ambitious and obscure project that seeks to present its cause and its potential reach at the same time. Fabian’s work demonstrates his diligence and adheres to a long tradition that harnesses art in order to work through philosophical problems. Not all exhibitions have to enable enlightening experiences, as though that were a moral mandate. Nevertheless, in these turbulent times, I think it behooves us to opt for vulnerable scenarios in which the eyes can vibrate and reconfigure themselves without the need to subject them to a larger-scale tremor.

The exhibition can be viewed by appointment until November 10.

— Bruno Enciso

Translated to English by Byron Davies