MOTIONLESS JOURNEYS

The idea of displacement—and therefore travel—is present in our notion of space, which is inconceivable without movement. A visionary Robert Smithson coined the term “mirror travel” in 1969 based on the ephemeral compositions he made during his journey around the Mexican state Yucatán. The notions of travel and reflection also converge in this gallery through the two confronted pieces by Olafur Eliasson: one serves as a compass to magnetically guide us along the gallery’s north-south axis, while the other multiplies the image of its environs and, like a lunar cycle, gradually compresses it. On the other side of the gallery is White Bubble by Ernesto Neto, a penetrable, moving space inside of which one loses the sense of the outside world, as if returning to the womb. Finally, two time markers flank the gallery: the video-survey made by conceptual artist David Lamelas the same year as Art and Space was published, and a steel and water sculpture by Nobuo Sekine that he started in 1969 and has undergone constant changes since then.