In the Moonshadow of Words

Text and image constitute two radically heterogeneous series. Language does not suffice to traverse thoroughly the surface of the image, and the image fantasises, obsessively and relishingly, about the completeness of the word. It is in this mismatched margin where the practice of painting erects itself and does its poetic job in the moonshadow of the words. It is a shadow nocturnal and lunatic, cast by the body drawing-writing of the words, and one that ineluctably eclipses their solar pretension. In an old article, Philippe Sollers reminded us that Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, had been created by Ra, god of the sun, to replace him during the night.
That substitute night -in darkness in a cavern riddled with drawings inscribed on the wall and awaiting a bolt of poetic lightning- is the subject of the series of paintings that I present today here in Asunción, in this museum, Museo del Barro.

Alexis Yebra
Buenos Aires, August 2019