THE UTILITIES ​​

​

Lihuel Gonzalez

 

 

Despite the cold, she stood for a long time.

The color of it all stirred something long forgotten.

Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember.

Cormac McCarthy

​​

​

As she walks along the beach, she spots the Chapel of Senhor da Pedra, standing out atop a rock by the sea. Built in the 17th century in a village near Porto, Portugal, the modest church defies the onslaughts of the Atlantic. However, what truly catches her eye is the dense foam hitting the sand. Like tongues, the waves expel all sorts of things, from plastic containers to remains of devotional candles and corpses.

​

Lihuel was just another tourist, but what began as a stroll in 2019 transformed into an imprecise method for getting to know cities: walking aimlessly, a legacy of the Situationists in the 60s. In her drifts, she collects images and objects that are out of service, like those metal detectors used to clear sand of dangers. Yet, opposing forces underlie this action: what the sea spits out, the city centrifuges.

​

The Utilities is an installation that brings together a collection of poetic and material finds that the artist has been investigating in recent years. Understood as a series of episodes, this exhibition is the second experience after her time in France in 2023, where she presented "The Beginning and End of Things" at La Cité internationale des arts, based on the observation and intervention of objects found in the streets of Paris. Now in Buenos Aires, during her excursions through the city, she focuses on metropolitan recurrences, especially on elements small enough to fit in her bag or that she can carry. These objects range from industrial debris to household utensils. Once raked, she doesn't intervene with their forms or functions, nor does she try to give them an afterlife; rather, her task seems to be that of constructing new memories of what is common to cities. Common, but not therefore valuable for contemporary life, which is governed by mandates of utility or profit. Someone defined this as the desert of the real. In this scenario, the artist seems to save experience from the oblivion of the consumption machine. A kind of organized melancholy. It's as if, when faced with the imperative to "let go," she counters it with moorings.

​

Among studio photographs and general objects, the installation is a fragment of the relationship between personal and urban landscapes. Portraits of small materials coexist with the rigidity of discarded items, creating a reverse collage. Lihuel brings the traces of her expeditions into the room to bring to life the photographs from her emotional archive. Material relationships become capricious, like on the street or in a back room. A banana peel next to a piece of marble, metals of all kinds holding a feather, a half-empty glass, a piece of glass on a paper loop – things come together through detours and small misalignments that feed a sense of unease, possibly close to the uncertainty of wandering. In her pilgrimage, she walks, collects, and connects one thing with another in a perpetual sequence of movements driven by a secret belief in becoming. Like someone watching the rain, with acceptance and wonder, each time. Perhaps her challenge isn't to direct a new course for the senses, but to keep the expectation of encounters afloat.

​