Notes on a series of photographs by Solange Fabiao
Dorothy Sayers put into the mouth of her resourceful hero, Lord Peter Wimsey: "If ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you have got to do is prevent people from associatin' their ideas. Most people don't associate anythin'- their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin' a lot of noise and goin' no where, but once you begin lettin' 'em string their peas into a necklace, it's goin' to be strong enough to hang you, what?"
Consider washers, the class of all classes that do not belong to themselves. Where does a discarded washer on the street belong? If a found washer belongs to the class of washers, it should not by the definition of the class of washers. If this washer does not belong to the class of washers, it should by the definition of washers. But this contradiction strikes at the very notion of classes of objects, a paradox with a catastrophic effect on our understanding of the world. I run through it in my mind. The lack of adequate indications to what happens after the washers fall and the ambiguity about precisely what Solange Fabiao and her washers are prey to, what ever transform them, these magnificent icons are still what puzzle her and what will continue to puzzle us. Extremely deep and vivid emotion which seeing the entire series gives, is doubtless, as our chance encounter as we are walking in the streets of Venice, Rome and New York often provoke, searching for objects that can be found nowhere else: cast aside, neglected, useless, almost incomprehensible, even perverse, in AndrŽ Breton's sense. For example, these washers. These irregular disks, silvery, covered with relief and depressions that are meaningless to us, streaked with diagonals, vertical and horizontal incisions of use and time. Here, in Solange Fabi‹o framed photographs, they are preciously set, almost nestled in black and white prints pressed and distanced under glass. Careful examination enables us to identify with their fate as their own identity is further removed from our grasp. A random sequence of events for ever beyond our ken, has brought them across our path; what part of a device they had been in their former life, how ever they operate in the cities of vast population in such and such address and in such and such date, though all of this will make it no more comprehensive, our attention is simultaneously caught by Solange's version of these washers lost in wretched circumstances, worthless incidents. Fortunately she decided to leaf through these incidents, for she has the time of her life to discover somewhere, somewhere else a washer, stuck at the edge of a cobble stone, partly hidden in melted asphalt - a copy of a poem written in silver rings. Clouds and rings of smoke in her blood (Lorca), she leaves us not much time to learn more of these unexpected circumstances. These works on paper and what they contain belong to her as nothing else. We are engaged for the duration, we too have become implicated in her devotion to these iron beads of her choice, her favorite settings, there, where they originally met. Upon our request, she may give the narrative of the images we find so condensed and definitely framed. It is remarkable, first of all, that these chance encounters had happened, what's more, that their neutrality, their objecthood suppressed everything we regard as having a fabulous value, like an extract of amber or an ageless attar of roses. On the other hand, we must admit seeing quite clearly what has occurred, a washer from some kind of machine, slipped into a slot inadvertently, as we struck it again with an eye blink, it is as if it fell on our head. Somewhere, in a distance and foreign city, a washer, a ring, normally under a nut has fallen. Metal beads of a story, a story told of an invisible city pierced for threading on string of neckless, or rosary, a pray for a day, for an hour. They were thrown, on and in our way. A washer, as a word in America, it might be understood as hole in the road, made by rushing water. But the work of art is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our habits, in our vices. That kind of stringing together, a correlation of incidents which well up into our minds, endlessly we scrutinizing them for differences and likenesses. A sign among many other possible sign, a signature, a mark. As an act of involuntary memory, whether worked by a madeleine dipped in tea, not far from Chartre, or by uneven paving stone under foot, recaptured lost time and revealed to Solange her vocation as a painter.
New York, April 2000Yeruda Safran
