Come into the (w)hole
Marcos Chaves and the incessant talking.
In Marcos Chaves’ work, formalized in the expression COME INTO THE (W)HOLE, the artist establishes a game of signifiers and meanings. This game, of apparent simplicity but of enormous complexity, will lead to a displacement of meaning, and it is this that produces a decontextualization of powerful poetic effect.
First of all, there is the irreconcilable tension between the signifiers HOLE (Hole) and WHOLE (Completeness). In one reading we have the Hole, which is one of the key concepts of Psychoanalysis; the Hole as a symbolization of the insurmountable empty space in the dual relationship between the Self and the Other; the hole as a symbolic expression of nowhere, an abyss in the face of the anguish of death. In another reading – which is the same! – Completeness appears, a concept (state, becoming) that does not exist for Psychoanalysis and functions in the work in a specular relationship with the Hole, producing a parodic, ironic and reflexive effect that takes us into the territory of poetry.
The polysemy of enunciation does not end here. Phonetically COME is equivalent to CUM (Goze). The divergent readings of “Goze no buraco” / “Goze na completude” are of a richness that escapes the analytical approach and enters the territory of poetic knowledge or, dare I say it, knowledge that escapes knowledge, that knows “before and more than”.
What has always attracted me to the work of Marcos Chaves is his extraordinary ability to displace and recontextualize the signifiers of words and phrases through metonymic slippages. The poetic result of his work leads us to the magic of strangeness and the discovery of artistic objects that never cease to speak.
Ruth Chindler
