2020202

2020S0S, installation view, Gaudel de Stampa, September 2020 2020S0S, installation view, Gaudel de Stampa, September 2020 2020S0S, installation view, Gaudel de Stampa, September 2020

S O S
THE OPENING SPRUNG
AUTOCHTHONES SPACE INTO
COME FROM WARM WAX SPACE
HARD HONEY TOUCH STONE MELTS
ROCK BLEEDS WARM WAX
S O S

 

 

 

2020202

 

An exhibition of Snake Paintings by Jessica Warboys
September 26, 2020 – January 16, 2021, Gaudel de Stampa, Paris.

We hope you can join. Masks required, thank you.

As hoops become eyes and openings or the coil of a snake, the potential of motifs is ever expanding.
2020202 snakes can be read as 2’s, 0’s, O’s and S’s. Mirrored, parting and roving.
2020202 is the sum of 7 autonomous parts.

The Snake Paintings are an evolution of a sequence in the earlier film works Stone Throat 2011 and Moon Burn / Moon Wave 2019 in which the reflection of a small stained glass hoop is snaking across volcanic rock.

The motion of the reflected glass led to the making of three stained glass snakes, their form coming directly from imagining a line drawn between three hoops. The Snake Painting series is a continuation of the former motif and motion explored through painting with liquid beeswax.

The use of wax followed time spent in Zennor, Cornwall at a studio close to the coastal site where I made a series of Sea Paintings, for Tate St Ives. Here there were bee hives and I began thinking about the bees and their beeswax, this brought back a memory of making batik as a kid.

The process of Snake Painting is a kind of repetition in movement, gradually the broken line of painted wax which flowed to create the snake motif, appears static in one sense whilst being made of sections of visible motion. The wax a solid object melted to a liquid to be painted on canvas. The wax creates a negative space through its resistance to other layers of colour, leaving a transparent yellow form before being removed with heat. In this case a kind of ghost image trace is embedded in the canvas once the surface wax is removed, to reveal a serpentine line emerging. JW

 

whichever way you look at it
it`s the same
the astral double
the level of noon
whichever way you move
the yellow turns into itself
taught by a snail to chew
you come back
you swallow an object
at the edge of its ontology
here is the wyrm
blind and unbinding
immutable and mute
¡eso es!
what do you ask for?
hands and mouths
move and move
under the stones
hiding and hiding the levy
they are trying to dig up
is there a word that you love?
is there a word that you think?
about all the time
whichever way
you say it
whisper it now
again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOON BURN MOON WAVE
BURN MOON WAVE MOON
BLOOD ORANGE DEMON LITHIC
WORLD WORM DAIMON LITHE
TURN HOLE FALL RETURN
SEA HIDES UP DAWN
FLOWS HOLO DAWN BURNS
VERTICAL SCROLL EMERGES RUIN
TIME ROLL RUNIC STONE