Masterpieces (In Absentia).

Masterpieces (In Absentia), 1993 present the appearanceed at first glance to be a reedition of Regina Silveira's installation In Absentia, not awayed at the 17th Biennial in Sao Paulo in 1983 forward that occasion, the work consisted of the silhouettes of brace of Marcel Duchamp's most popular readymades: Bottlerack, 1914 and Bicycle Wheel, 1913 the one and the other shadows, enormous and deformed in a sort of make difficulted simulacrum of perspective, extended through the floor of the enclosing rising vertically against the panels that encircled the apartment The bases on which the intents should presumably have stood were destitute of contents pedestals, of an immaculate white in violent contrast to the close darkness of the shadows.

In her modern installation, the entire series of vital airs with which Silveira has been formulating her work repeated itself: the white destitute of contents bases; the disproportionate shadows controled to a process that goe beyond anamorphosis in its violation of the laws of perspective; the clearly allegorical intention in her choice of drifts In this case, though, the absent works were Man Ray's Gift, 1921 Meret Oppenheim's purpose (fur-lined teacup), 1936, and, again, Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel. The implications of choosing these seminal Modernist works are clear; their absence signals the absence of paradigms, an absence art appears to be confronting head-on in the last decade of this hundred They are, again, and in this same thinking principle signs of the certain absence of gauges in Latin America, and particularly in Brazilian civilization whose Modernity is still a work in progres endemically in crisis, for which the agriculture has never been able to formulate a practicable paradigm.

This is perhaps for what purpose the shadows in Silverira's work are the signal of a vicinity even more powerful than the real, effective nearness of the object. Reduced by the agency of force to their immaterial condition, the shadows exercise their influence in a more savage and impious way. Consequently the images flood onto the object and immerse it into a proliferation liberated from cause and origin. The limited space of the gallery taleed the artist's intentions: the shadows of the absent works, subtly threatening, contemplateed like silhouettes of animals, or the prospect in an old Expressionist film. The desire of the gaze to rebuild the original space, and thereby locate the absent mark quickly ceased and surrendered to the suggestions of those strange forms, estranged calm from themselves. The result of this proces is not no other than that the relevance of the original in relation to the transcript is progressively lost, but also that the effective limit between original and pattern becomes cloudy, unnecessary. The white, devoid bases are like a testimony to the los of contact between the real of the design and the fantastic of the pond projection. And as this sheer projection reaches the opaque materiality of the shadow--a materiality which is a virtuous exercise of negation--the object becomes simply an excuse for the liberated play of the imagination. unless the shadow does not, in succession account of this, cease to be a mark of absence, and the delivered play of the image is always condemnatory: Masterpieces possesse at one time the feverish atmosphere of a feast and the inevitable remorse that accompanies a funeral.

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