Dear Shaded Viewers and Diane,
Do not sequester yourself away inside a white or black box as your main place of habitation. Instead, consider a self-decorated, pixelated interior whose walls are filled with large sheets. These are the only surfaces where confined emotions demand nourishment from equally luscious images, no more delicious than a magazine’s spread printed on folded bio-top Italian paper.
Our recently planned escapade while locking ourselves down ended up in empowering celebration by Cactus Magazine. Immediately after its arrival, the unwrapping became a visual exercise continued through endless combinations of the magazine’s folded pages (a total of twenty). You can keep creating a new magazine– deciding the cover not once, but over and over again. While releasing all the tension accumulated through the compression of such a highly curated selection of images, fastening and unfastening it all felt as crispy as it did distinguished.
Featuring: Pablo Arroyo, Blackhaine, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Pietro Cocco, Matthieu Delbreuve, Penny Goring’s HOW MANY TIMES CAN I BE RUINED ballpoint pen on paper, Rita Lino, Canadian artist Shawn Maximo’s The Hoarde 2017(majestic to see how he envisions possible futures on a floating base somewhere in the isolated ocean living a serious life surrounded by plastics) Davide Meneghello, Trevor Paglen, Bart Julius Peters (exchanging love letters about how eyes when in full connection with parfumerie work – something that will never exhaust him), Gabriele Rosati, Marinella Senatore, Davide Stucchi, Benjamin Vigliotta
Post meticulous exploration, after discovering each of the solo page’s arid beauty and upon gaining full confidence, we started combining and turning them upside down, taping them on the wall, all the while pretending to curate our own exhibition at home– fully indoors. We ended up building an entire show and then pulling it down, strapping the magazine back into its original presentation. Who knows– until a friend wants to join in this ongoing Cactus Magazine packaging show– if anybody’s home?
Before the official opening of the bedroom show, we advise you to leave the space, closing the door and having a two-minute shower. Transform the room into a tea house (sweet Egyptian tea will fit just fine) as we did and reopen the door. For this exact moment, we recommend you turn on Metamorphosis Talks #01 (Dutch photographer Bart Julius Peters in conversation with Tommaso Speretta will tour you on his feature and you will hear a triptych with the magazine’s editor Simone Rossi. Well worth a listen!). The tea might be almost finished around this time, at which point we suggest you walk around your room, walk squares across the floor, before cutting across the room diagonally. All of this to encompass the Amsterdam artist’s voice– we so admire his work– all the while in the presence of the magazine.
CACTUS(to zero power) A Metamorphosis of Intention and Form. Autumn/Winter 2020-2021 is available online, order it here!
Best,
Marcelo Horacio Maquieira Piriz.
