Emptiness and still-lifes – Francesc Morera

( From Morandi to Zurbaran, covering Cezanne)

We suggest a hypothetical journey which goes from Morandi’s stillness to Zurbaran’s austerity. It embraces the static timelessness of the first and lingers in the simplicity of the latter, who – with his solitary and sparse elements – holds gravity back from his still-lifes. And we do not forget Cezanne – halfway through the journey – and the draperies which constitute the core elements of his still-lifes. All these elements make up the baggage-absences where draperies have been used almost in the way of shrouds. The resulting shapes act as plane which marks the limit between non-being (the absence) and space – a plane which struggles between emptiness and nothingness. And in this way the object and its limits change roles so that the limit – rather than the object – becomes the real. The look, then, tends to fix the resulting objects, unadorned, in an ancestral eternity which is oblivious and prior to history – as if they were animals, crouching, hidden, waiting to spring at the visitor’s soul.

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