Alexis Kanatsios, 'Temperament'.
11 - 27 Mar 2023
Trepanation is a surgical procedure wherein a hole is drilled into one’s skull, removing a small part of the unified surface of bone to raise one’s ‘brain blood volume’ through reduced pressure and increased oxygen flow; modern advocates for voluntary trepanation, though few, even purport a permanent psychedelic or spiritual effect.
Alexis and I talk about the violence of display, the way it severs a thing from its sentimental and causal relationships, so that it may approach nothing and in turn becoming beautiful again. A head of a sledgehammer is trepanned through the removal of its handle. Bereft of its capacity to be wielded, it lies in the centre of a large suspended platform, with its newfound cavity of uselessness bared, yet almost entirely eclipsed from view. I stand between walls and beneath floor and lean over, peering into the indented head, teetering on falling in. Drawings wrap around themselves to form containers, which hover at throat-height; their pink hues and scenes of expansive empty interiors, cardinal numeracy and romantic, looping forms soften a paranoid, latent threat of ritualised decapitation permeating the room.
Parts of objects form new wholes as they are suspended in a space otherwise perfectly unified, were it not for my standing outside of it, in a cavity to call my own. In this place, the codified pressures of interpretation exit my head, giving way to a witnessing: the violence of thing hurtling toward objecthood, which is to say becoming beautiful.