Chantal Crousel

JOSÉ MARÍA SICILIA
L'Instant
1 February - 5 March 2014

This seventh exhibition of José Maria Sicilia at Galerie Chantal Crousel represents the outcome of his work on birdsongs transcribed into images. This transcription finds its roots within the oriental carpet, representative of Eden. José Maria Sicilia works birds’ sonograms into different mediums, depending upon the climate that he wishes to reveal: in octogonal shapes on white marble, in vast surfaces of ink on japanese paper, in wooden panels covered in gold leaf with inlays or in a succession of daguerreotypes.

Geometry projects time,
A birdsong makes the space in front of me recess,
the birdsong is the instant,
only the instant,
there is no present nor future,
that instant is plenitude,
one knows one exists,
it feeds us and devours us at the same time,
it is the consciousness of our solitude,
it is before language.
A birdsong that just disappeared is even deader than death,
the duration of a birdsong is made up of instants with no duration,
its duration is being.
The song of a bird makes time stand still.
It squeezes extasis,
it gives us back the lost units of time,
this time is not,
but arises,
arising is leaving the depths of one’s being.

- José Maria Sicilia