Maria Sheriff

SYNCHRONE
09.03–10.04.1998

If we were to reflect on what presents itself to view—while the city lights (those of an urban cosmos laid out on a glass plane) gently and slowly dip, fold back, and fade, each one slipping away the moment our attention pinpoints, isolates, and fragments their multiplicity—we would gain an intuition of the videographic nature of Maria José Sheriff’s artistic work. We would grasp that a sensitive quest emerges from it, seeking to produce an image of how objects and places are transformed over time by natural phenomena. Alongside this exploration of flatness, governed by the sculptor’s eye, the artist places a distinctly sculptural reflection—stemming from similar concerns—that occupies the other part of the space. Two rectangular wooden prisms bear the traces of pressure; two rectangular wooden prisms suggest the pressure to which they were subjected. These volumes, known as “the Twins,” can be viewed as two temporal states of the same object or as two related formations. They join their videographic counterparts in a captivating evocation of space and time.

Patrice Duhamel