The artworks in Trains & Boats & Planes aim to explore, from different angles, the emotional dimensions of distance, trips and the “missing”, the saudade, the Sehnsucht.
The title of the exhibition has been taken from Burt Bacharach’s homonymous song composed in 1965, suggesting the coming and going, the loss and gain, the appearance and disappearance of our beloved ones and our dearest places. Likewise, trains, boats and planes have always been linked to the notions of displacement, mainly in modern times: Georges Perec’s book “Ellis Island” already mentioned the “wandering, dispersion, diaspora”, the exile and the eternally-moving passengers.
The artists taking part in this exhibition met almost two decades ago for the first time, while under the auspices of the legendary gallery The Project, in New York. Since then, and despite living as far away as Rio de Janeiro, Zürich and Santiago de Chile, they have carried on with their artistic alliance, bound together by their friendship and their mutual admiration.
Regarding this particular project, Damasceno, Hess and Silva have, at first, organized it literally -but also playfully and poetically- by means of a “trio” method. They somehow planned to show three pieces: one dealing with the sky, one with the sea and one with earth; a small one, a medium-sized one and a big one; one hanging on a wall, one standing on the floor and one hanging from the ceiling; a very early one, another more recent and a brand new piece, a two-dimensional one, a relief one and a three-dimensional one.
So, one of Damasceno’s pieces on the exhibition is “O Céu e O Mar”, an elegant geometrical composition on the wall made up of sailing ropes. On his part, Nic Hess will present miniature train rails in his piece “Train to Nowhere”, and Cristián Silva contributes with “Hoja de higuera hembra”: a fig leaf graphite wall drawing outline, expanding concentrically in a two-dimensional space.
