"They are beautiful for what they are" – this was Selene's first comment when I asked her where the idea came from to use small marble blocks for the works in her exhibition at Teké Gallery. At first glance it might seem a banal remark, but upon seeing the works for the exhibition, I actually found it profoundly meaningful.
Different materials – Belgian Black, Portuguese Pink, Mexico Black, Statuario White, Carrara Ordinario – all approached by the artist with the same poetry. The blocks, in their volume, remain unaltered, but Selene excavates within them, creating tunnels that delicately traverse the stone. A research that gives us sculptures finely polished on the outside yet rough and satin-finished inside.
Still. Motionless. Like a statue. Deep silence and calm. Again, again and again. Just as water, flowing always over the same spot, hollows, modifies, smooths, deforms the rock to carve a passage, so the artist's hand finds in small marble blocks a world that proliferates and multiplies inside the stone, traversing it, laying it bare, bringing to light a new beauty.
"Still" in English can have multiple meanings – it can mean "motionless" but at the same time "yet" – and immediately seemed the most fitting word to describe this solo exhibition. But Still is also a Joy Division album, and of this group, one cover in particular reminds me of this young artist's work: Unknown Pleasures, where against a black background the representation of a series of electromagnetic pulses produced by a Pulsar Star intertwine and overlap, creating a vibration in space that I've always found hypnotic, sensual, from the first time I saw it – just like these sculptures.
As the discovery of Pulsars led to the discovery of new planets beyond our solar system in constant motion, so Selene's work allows us to appreciate new worlds within motionless stone. Eternal.