ROSENDO CID. STAIRCASE WIT
the demolition of matter
falls over cliffs from another dimension
(reaped from nonsense)
the defence of a mistake
or the nuances of failure
(sunny winters)
Rosendo Cid
The work of Rosendo Cid (Ourense, Spain, 1974) is based on key aspects ranging from a Dadaist spirit, as he often uses unaltered objects or images, to the somewhat serious or solemn questioning that appears to surround contemporary art. This is the result of his work in series, from which an understanding of art as a variable and constant process is derived.
His work can be related to the methodological attitudes of the literary group OuLiPo. Through the assembly and reassembly of objects, as if they were an infinite collage, Rosendo Cid creates new tensions and structures. Thus, from a formal point of view, his pieces are dominated by lines, empty spaces, parallelisms and the sought-after contrast between light and shadow.
For this exhibition at the CGAC, the artist focuses on two literary ideas. On the one hand, the French expression l’esprit de l’escalier (staircase wit) which describes the act of finding a clever response when it is too late, a phenomenon that is accompanied by an obvious sense of regret. And, on the other, the Odradek, an imaginary creature from a story by Franz Kafka described as an object-being that feels out of place and has no other apparent use than its own existence.
L’esprit de l’escalier illustrates a situation of time lag and Odradek represents wandering objects ‘that lack their own space’. To develop these concepts of ‘time lag’ and ‘being out of place’, the artist works with objects he finds that once had their own time and place, isolating them to defragment the everyday aspects and give them a time and place that is specific but also indefinite at the same time. It is precisely this contradiction that gives them a poetic component that does not allow precision when defining them.