SOFÍA DURRIEU AT KUNSTVEREIN HEPPENHEIM

A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached. It is a chronic condition often resistant to treatment. When the cut ends of sensory fibers are stimulated during certain movements, the patient feels the sensation arising from the missing part, hence feeling that it is still connected to the body. 

Repressed memories and sensory information from previous motor commands could explain the reason for existing sensations after amputation. The experience of the body is created by a wide network of interconnecting neural structures, which he called the “neuromatrix”. The memories remain due to previous neural connections in the brain, and as the motor output is amplified due to the missing limb; the patient may experience the overflow of information as pain. 

In his Schéma du Corps, neurologist and psychologist Paul Schilder explains that the more a body part has been stimulated, – mainly by touch and variation – the more acute the sensations of the part become, and the more important is its role within the psyche. The complex interplay of experience and emotionality constitutes the map and notion of one’s own body.

That memory of something that we know was there, that still speaks through a sensibility, but that now seems to be gone is what the group of works shown at KVHP deals with.

The first group of works is a sculptural triptych. Twin pieces, made of red bronze, face each other symmetrically positioned on iron supports. Accompanying each pair is a longilinear shape. The first pair is intended to be placed on the head, the second on the chest, and the third on the feet. This set of pieces refers – by form and function – to our internal structures:  they are exoskeletons, shapes that cite a fundamental yet forgotten part of our own body. Some alterations and extensions can be seen in the morphology of these new bones. Hook-shaped appendages are meant to receive the ends of the longilinear shapes, which will link both twin parts into a single articulated form, a shared skeleton. Both through and beyond their material presence, the works invite to a situation of committed participation, in an encounter with oneself and another. There, the phantom limb makes an appearance.

Bone, and skeleton, are literal images that refer to the biological world. Yet, this literalness must be transferred to the psychic, perceptual, and affective spheres, reflecting the structures that also articulate us there, because the division between these dimensions – although it would seem to have bewitched us with the mirage of THE truth – is only operative. At a closer look, the angled forms reveal the constructed, intentional character of this skeleton. In the texture, the pores of an industrial material that we know and generally dismiss: polystyrene. The insulating and shock-absorbing properties of the automatic material, light and brittle, are transformed into union, weight, and resonance in its transfer to bronze. If in the discourse there is the light promise of union with others, it is in the concrete practice where the difficulties are found, as well as the real treasure that brings the embodied, physical, and transfiscal, sometimes heavy and sometimes light graceful dance together.

The material translation intends to find meaning beyond concept and language, in the actual practice and in the presence brought to a new situation. The duplicated skeleton gives a body to the primordial experience, in which we are all part of a vast, interconnected being. Ignored as the consequent learning of the rules and categorical divisions of a highly individualistic and functional-oriented world, we can often feel it, the suspected echo of an ancient memory. Therefore, the linked pieces propose to reconstitute that forgotten sensibility of a bodyemotionpsyche where myself and the other are inextricably united. In the attempts, awkwardness, difficulties, discomfort, tension, questions, agreements, and enjoyment that will arise in the first experience of joint use, there will also appear the possibility of learning to move together, in a common organism, similar and heterogeneous.

The second group of pieces leads the visitor to turn away from the space of the room, where the link with another-that-is-not-me is at play. Small-sized and made in white bronze, the gesture-imprinted shapes function as anchor points – perhaps of a climbing wall…? They are windows to the “individual” and “private” “interior” space. Placed at specific positions, they lead the person to adopt a posture, disappearing behind them and leaving only the body’s gesture as a visible sign.

Here again, the physical dimension is a language in itself, as well as the manifestation and metaphor of mental, emotional, and spiritual attitudes: to compress in a corner, to open up to see beyond, to look inside, to touch both high and low, to stretch wide. Here, the static positions are a way to move past the limit of the wall’s concrete surface, and into the unknown landscape of one’s psyche. This requires a certain degree of isolation: not as an endpoint, but as a place from which to reemerge and to go meet the world, reconnected with the notion of our vast being. Stretched, enlarged, and unknown, the connection of oneself with oneself – so often forgotten – reveals itself, in turn, as the forgotten limb.

The third group of pieces – again, a triptych in itself, perhaps mirroring the first one? – propose a different instance of participation, more linked to consideration. They are a symbolic echo, a resonance of the emotions associated with loss. Or are they a gateway to the mystery? Made in yellow bronze, the warmth of their glow brings a certain closeness to what we suspect to be there but is out of direct sight: a finger signals without pointing, calling for the arch of magic contained in the mundane; shed tears become a candleholder, a place for a light piercing the surrounding darkness. Finally, a flower. She is made of the shape that receives the bronze when it’s poured, of the channels where the hot metal flows during the sculpture-making process. Usually cut off and discarded, these parts are essential for the shape to exist.

In the works, situation, and experience are considered parts of the sculpture itself, and participation and movement search to open a reelaboration of the spiritual-social dimension through the resonant sensitivity brought by a concrete and material reality.

Phantom Limb proposes to reexperience the fading sensibility of an intrinsic, indispensable part of our anatomy: the collaborative life that is almost forgotten, the continuity of beings, different, equal, interdependent, and united.

Sofía Durrieu