The Imaginary Pediment, at the Liminal Gallery, Valencia, Spain

November 25, 2021 - January 26, 2022

The work of cyriaco lopes terri witek combines images and texts in a lyrical meditation on the passage of time and on the imperfect language of that which remains and is transformed. They bring together fragments of history and cultural landscapes: decontextualised museum posters and manuals, sculptures and places. Interested in the genealogies of both experimental visual poetry and visual essay, in their work, mythology, history and archaeology weave a delicate plot that takes us back to when philosophy was poetry and art was life. From the beginning, their artistic work as a duo values both chance and choice, exploring the different visual poetics of the text-image binomial.

In the imaginary pediment, the Brazilian-US duo cyriaco lopes terri witek invites us into a poetic meditation via performance, visual poetry, embroidery, veiled imagery and video – pointing to what we choose to remember or to forget, and to the transitory and fragmentary nature of all connections we make. In their work, mythology, history and archaeology weave a delicate web that takes us back to a time when philosophy was poetry and art was life.

The different series of work that braid the exhibition together—all recently created and shown for the very first time— find a time and space of common inspiration: a visit to Olympia (Greece), and most specifically the artists seeing the remainders of the pediments of the ancient temple of Zeus, conserved in its museum. Those pediments are an example of the severe style, itself a fulcrum between artistic traditions of Africa, Asia and Europe. Interested in that lingering place of cultural encounter: a place of invention and possibilities, they compose an invocation using text collected from the ancient site of Olympia.

The pediment is also a strict geometrical space that encloses politics, history, and passions. In its triangle, people are killed, and people are conquered. Half-remembered layers of history that obscure, recompose themselves into images.

cyriaco lopes terri witek address what they call ‘the discourse of fragments’, of the wholeness of what is known only in parts. That is also the language of poetry and art, where a space is filled by what is left out, by what is unpredictably completed by the encounter of the artwork with the world.