Exhibition Text by Charles Benjamin

Like almost any city, seen from above Santiago's streets are like

cracks of activity in a desert of rooftops. For very long Javier has

been collecting things found on these rooftops. Things that the

rooftops have transformed into ex-things. Balls, toys, tiles,

magazines, bones, clothes, pipes, electronics and plastic bags speak

from somewhere removed with a view from above. They are in a way

readymades, but they are also reminders of how readymades hope to

make us feel: Like a bottle of champagne on the titanic or a flag on

the moon or a body on Everest. There is a certain distance required

for this shifting of perspective which in our little world of art is

provided by isolating just about anything in a white cube. What's

nice about Javier's objects is that they have already been robbed of

their life as common objects before entering our little world of

art. They face this with a certain ambivalence, shifting between

melancholy and chaos, and it's as if this invisible transformation

which is meant to serve our investigative eye creates suspicion

towards our senses. Javier floats a giant lonely ear in a boat in

front of a misty horizon(Lost Ear, 2017) and strands a huge

nose(Lost Nose, 2017) in the center of Galleria Gabriela Mistral. At

some point in 2019 he floats a moon around a small island in

China(Attractive system 1, 2019) which is said to talk about the

moon's relationship to earth but sparks a vague memory of a story

told to me as child about a character helplessly attempting to save

the moon when he finds it floating in the ocean off a pier. At

Espacio Telearte Javier shows giant eyes which look out at the

center of Santiago with a paranoid stare, and rooftop objects in

half of the space which are Hologramed into the other half. Telstar,

the title of the exhibition, is taken from the Adidas Telstar, an

iconic football lost on rooftops around the globe, named after the

1962 Telstar communication satellite. To me these all speak of an

unavoidable imposed sense of distance.

Javier tells me about being invited by an older colleague to a party

during his early days working at the university. The "party" turns

out to be his colleague and couple. There is one bottle of whiskey

each, some pineapple ice-cream, and cocaine. Conversation flows.

After a couple of hours and a wonderful time, the colleague politely

suggests that they all have a foursome together. The offer is left

hanging as Javier goes to the bathroom and hears what he thinks are

hallucinatory cries of an infant. Investigating a room down the

corridor, he finds his colleague's daughter calmly drawing on the

sheets, and her already drawn on younger sister. On the floor there

are bowls taped down with different cereals, rice, noodles, and

nursing bottles with water spread throughout the room. Seen from

above, it's like a very nice hamster cage.

This serves as a basis for the "Why to build if to destroy is

faster" at Amore, Basel. It's no longer the forgotten landscape of

Santiago's rooftops, but a hidden domestic landscape. In a certain

sense, "on the roof" and "below the carpet" are very similar places,

but what's discarded and forgotten on the roof is concealed and

forever shameful below the carpet. The title is taken from Jean-

Jacques Rousseau's "Emile, or On Education", a treatise on education

and the nature of man, where in a part about infancy destroying and

building are said to be of equal value to an infant, which is why

they often choose to destroy because it is immediately satisfying. A

satisfaction Rousseau argues does not exist in building, because the

value of creating is moral. The smoking baby does not worry about

health. The creating artist does however worry about the smoking

baby. In Javier's case, this worry seems to be a worry in itself.

What can be said from a distance? What's the use of moralizing when

reality clearly avoids these distinctions? What's the use of

creating if you are not moralizing?

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