Back and Forth

« The animals painted on the walls of Lascaux are not there in the same way as the fissures and limestone formations. But they are not elsewhere. Pushed forward here, held back there, held up by the wall’s mass they use so adroitly, they spread around the wall without ever breaking from their elusive moorings in it. I would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For I do not look at it as I do at a thing; I do not fix it in its place. » – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit, 1960

In the practice of Guillermo Mora and Adelheid De Witte, painting oscillates between various states of being and materializes in diverse ways. Their works exist in a precarious equilibrium, traversed by contrary forces. They add, conceal, tear away, erase before adding again, in a constant tension between what is thought of and what is not, between the slow construction of a composition and the impulse of a gesture.