João Maria Gusmão
Day for Night / Clownwork and a Pale Horse
Two exhibitions by João Maria Gusmão

In the wake of twenty-twenty-six, Sies + Höke is pleased to present a two-fold exhibition by João Maria Gusmão, divided between the gallery’s third floor and its apartment showroom. Distilled from the alchemical and conceptual compost of the artist’s cultivated idiocy, here lies a double conundrum about the end of the world. On the third floor of the gallery, Gusmão unveils Day for Night, a suite of ultra–large-format darkroom “polaroids” (20 × 24 inch RA4 reversal prints) that engage with the cinematic device once used by classical filmmakers to depict nighttime in broad daylight. This technique consisted of a simulated colour and density rendering produced through a combination of underexposure and colour filters in camera—a photochemical workaround enabling directors to include in their movies night scenes otherwise impossible to shoot. It conveys the paradoxical nature of image-making within a world lacking imagination: how to conjure images of what cannot be seen or of that which lies outside visibility. Some say these photographs by Gusmão resemble paintings; others describe them as visual haiku; still others see them as generic mnemonic imagery of a world enshrouded. The artist, for his part, remains silent; rather than store them in drawers, he prefers a chest packed with paradoxes. Gusmão juggles this expanded perception by magnifying his grimoire of alternative photographic processes. For this series of unique prints, the artist draws on a wide scope of photographica to extract his compositions out of coloured cardboard models—depth of field, blur and focus, over- and under-exposure, vignetting, light leaks, etc. They all have in common being about light, artificial or natural, becoming artificial again. The titles of the works are enlightening and descriptive in that matter: streetlamp and building, ceiling lamp off, airplane window during the day and at night, black cat in a dark room, lighthouse at dawn, the sun behind the curtain, etcetera and etcetera. Following Day for Night comes Clownwork and a Pale Horse, a 16 mm film program featuring two new films by the artist alongside a selection of recent work. The mood changes as the medium turns animated. True to its formula—no formula—each film summons its own distinct cinematic experiment. Together, they compose a broad overview of the artist’s experimental thought, practice, and aesthetic: analogue means sublimated by analogue concepts; sympathetic magic verges on oracular materialism; augury; spell and counter-spell; metonymies to ponder the disquiet of our time and the thereafter. Clownwork, one of the new films, presents a handheld sequence-shot of a circus clown performance in which the characters—the white clown, the contre-auguste, and the auguste—are dressed up as construction workers. Carrying paint buckets, a ladder, and timber, they approach centre arena intending to restore a stage prop that resembles a classical sculpture. Needless to say, everything goes awry: paint buckets on the head, slaps in the face, the occasional kick in the arse, flying boards—boom and kaboom—an archetypal motion picture of traditional, self-inflicted and afflicted violence. On the other hand, Behold a Pale Horse! (Where the Sun Sets), the other new film, turns toward sci-fi landscaping: a post-apocalyptic, pre-human, anti-human, or simply no-human trompe-l’œil of twilight vistas. Exhumed from an Ektachrome colour-slide estate belonging to a Scottish amateur photographer from the ’80s—an enthusiast of sunsets, cloud formations at dusk, and evening lakefronts—it unfolds as a dissolving sequence of otherworldly planetary scenery. This imagery is red, green, and blue: produced through a triple in-camera RGB exposure of carefully composed relic slides from that same archive. Beautiful in the sublime, conceptual sense, yet disturbing for precisely the same reason. Just come and see it.