Gathering is pleased to be participating in Liste, Basel for the first time with a presentation of works by Emanuel de Carvalho in Booth 37.
Occupying the majority of the booth will be de Carvalho’s lack archē, a monumental sculpture that acts as a visual barrier to the painting situated behind it. The monolithic form, fabricated in steel with a slate-black patina, emerged from the artist’s ongoing collaboration with French philosopher Catherine Malabou. Created in response to Malabou’s concept of anarchy, the five-metre form works to subvert Western conceptions of functionality. While the plasticity of lack archē suggests that it might serve some purpose, de Carvalho’s interventions in the work, its height and the placement of its slits, disrupt any role it might otherwise facilitate. The sculpture gives material presence to Malabou’s theories, exploring the embodiment of anarchy, which Malabou describes as “governing without principle”: a form of order that exists without command, hierarchy, or origin.
De Carvalho extends these concerns in his painting archē lack, situated alongside the sculpture. The weathered surface of the composition depicts a warehouse-like interior, chairs arranged in neat rows, its emptiness generating more questions than answers. The distorted familiarity of the scene cultivates a space that is more psychologically atmospheric than anchored in reality. Derelict yet latent with possibility, the space rendered here is charged with pedagogical potential, a significant motif throughout de Carvalho’s practice. The non-functioning spaces of archē lack thus challenge the epistemological assumption that access to knowledge should be limitless, and affirm the autonomy of the archive over our expectations of it.
