EXHAUSTED PARADISE
2004
Video installation (two channel with audio)
Projections on a blue-light background
Loop 7’34” minutes / Variable dimensions
Two men, one dressed in black, the other in white, walk symmetrically across desert sand dunes. They see each other. They walk towards each other. They pass each other. They walk towards each other again, only to breeze by. One walks behind the other. They see each other. They stare at each other but do not communicate. There is an atmosphere of desire but also of impossibility. The sun is the only witness besides the mirror and the ocean in the background. The two men are one.
Commissioned for the 2nd Biennale of Gran Canaria, Dias & Riedweg encountered and invited the non–actor Eduardo Garcia Gonzalez, a Cuban clandestine resident on the island, to play the role in the video. The piece was entirely recorded on the dunes of Maspalomas, an international gay tourist hotspot for the anonymous sexual practice known as cruising. The character carries a mirror with him as he crosses the landscape, and this mirror becomes the portal through which the artists can insert documentary material into the realm of fiction.
Installations: Kunstmuseum Luzern, Suíça, 2014; MAM Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brasil/Brazil, 2012; Art Rio, Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Rio de Janeiro, 2011; MACO, Sicardi Gallery, Mexico DF, 2010; Paraísos Possíveis – Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, 2009; Sentidos sem direção e outras direções de sentido, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, 2009; 2nd Biennial of Canarias, Spain, 2009 (commission)
TWO MEN WALK OVER SAND DUNES. ONE FOLLOWS THE OTHER. THEY SEE EACH OTHER BUT DO NOT COMMUNICATE. DESIRE AND IMPOSSIBILITY. Fata Morgana. THE SUN IN HIGHLIGHTS, AN OCEAN AND A MIRROR BEHIND EVERYTHING.
DIAS & RIEDWEG, INTERVIEW TO FRIEZE MAGAZINE, UK, EDITION 5/2009
THE Process
