Exhibition Text
Flor Flores vaguely recalls how seven years ago, while enrolled in a philosophy class, they learned that for the Greeks, to do philosophy was to be a friend of knowledge. Often, there was a mediator facilitating this correspondence, an already-there presence. In Plato, there is Socrates, and in Socrates, there is the Sophist whom Socrates struggles to differentiate their ideas from. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this already-there mediator as conceptual personae. In Flor Flores’ practice, there is a conceptual personae whose names are in flux; they are several, a multitude, and some aliases they use are Tazzy, Wazzz, Florencio, and ;). Flor Flores strives to foster a conceptual environment where this personae can flourish. They represent the minor voices, that small voice in your head that says irreverent things and is often shut off by your bigger voice, repressed. But it’s also already aware of the systems of language that allow it to be.
This personae is the real stage-hand behind Flor Flores’ work. It’s a collaboration: they both attempt to “loosen the nuts” of systems of subjectification by learning how to coexist with others and each other, asking themselves what it is to write in place of the other, to conjure a language that is not here yet, that exists outside of straight time. Flor Flores uses images of flowers and plants that are sent to them by friends. In a double entendre of multiple folds, these images reflect how their friends think of Flor, and what reminds them of them. Through these images, they mediate their own subjectivities. The weight of each image is unfolded in several compositions, fading away each time it is transferred, becoming less visible, becoming less subjectified, becoming ground, becoming a gestural trace of sensations and elusive temporalities. These images and means of image-making are mediated through Florencio and their process-based practice. Traces of the images are reflected in painterly gestures, colors, and lines that eventually mutate to a form that alludes to writing; they write propositions for a language that is not here yet.
Florencio wrote in their painting journal the other day:
Florencio’s first try at writing
Florenx first hand at writing
First try at cursive
Gets tired halfway
Letters can’t convey
Glyphs
So colors in between
What does one write about,
When there is just not one thing?
What is grammar
That I don’t know,
What is this great order
That doesn’t fit?
Anst
Angst
Rraawwww
If I change it,
It becomes a bigger machine.
If I don’t, I don’t exist.
If I make a different machine,
It is still a machine
And will eat others,
Including us.
Must learn how to loosen the nuts,
Add kinks to the motions,
Make rooms inside the machine
To dance,
To laugh,
To be free,
To feel…
