---

On the Brink of Blindness

Installation with neons, spot lights, floor vinyl, laser engraved polystyrene, opal stone, text, sound
Dimensions variable
2022

On the Brink of Blindness is a white hole that attracts and repels, that expels light and causes retinal persistence. A space without time or a time warped. A fluctuation of matter. An installation that entangles light, sound, space and matter in the visual and corporal perception of the viewer.


It all starts with a flashing light that strikes the eyes in the street next to AARDUORK. Pedro Torres' work is already drawing you into its gravitational field, into its score of photons projected through the windows. Perhaps, you are also hearing a voice, speaking to you, leaving words hanging in the space between you and the light that attracts you.

Pedro Torres collects theories of the astronomical, cosmological universe as one might collect peculiar stones on a mountain path. He observes them, studies them, selects them, and takes them with him. Then, he places them next to each other, building a precious and simple aesthetic experience of thoughts and theories that try to explain phenomena that we will never see. Just as a scientific illustration can be an aesthetic experience, an engine for the imagination and our perspective on sidereal space, Pedro Torres evokes a small cosmos that becomes an experience for our bodies, always balancing the conceptual with the aesthetic.

On the Brink of Blindness is an environment, an intense physical relationship with space. It invites us to explore the existence of white holes, the opposites of black holes, according to thoughts derived from general relativity.

If a black hole is a singularity that swallows all the matter, a white hole is a hypothesis that there is a continuous emission of matter that attracts and repels at the same time. This hypothesis, not yet verified by the astronomical sciences, is the starting point of an installation that generates a spatial score where a small universe is revealed among the parts that compose it:a strong light that strikes the retinas of people in space, attracting and making people move away at the same time; neon lights underline that every mass, however small and insignificant, bends space-time; a voice delicately evokes a poem of disintegration, fluctuation, and attraction, while marking the time of crossing this space and time.

As gravity is the fundamental force that brings matter to be what it is and allows all other forces to exist, On the Brink of Blindness, generates a force field that guides us in thinking ourselves on a different scale, perceiving the limits of our vision and therefore of our body, while we are gently guided to a suspended tale of what it might mean to exist in space.

aarduork
16.04 – 15.05.2022