Sealed Imprint. Estéfana Román

“Perhaps there is still something to think about as life in those things.”

I see an image of a path lined with trees, where a rectangular structure made of translucent panels stands. Several people occupy this space, partially concealed by the semi-transparent surfaces. One of the panels bears a sign indicating a smoking area. The Observer traces rings of smoke and keeps a pair of headphones that now only play through one ear. At one end, two stone posts are connected by a metal bar.

Motionless, The Unproductive fixes their gaze on The Executive while leaning against one of the posts. Their suit and shirt still retain the shape of a disciplined body, and the cigarettes appear as nothing more than a brief pause in their routine. The surrounding vegetation creates a tranquil atmosphere, somewhat removed from the rest of the city. The Sleeper yawns and exhales onto the glass surface, fogging it up and enveloping their face in a cloud of condensation that lingers suspended in the air.

On the screens of the devices we use every day, glass functions as an active surface, organized into layers that operate in concert to emit light and generate images. Pixel by pixel. Point by point of visual information. When this material is used in architecture, however, it reappears in a laminated and more durable form. It creates enclosed spaces that are isolated yet visible from the outside, where the image perceived from beyond depends upon the conditions within. Atmosphere and light determine what becomes visible. As condensation builds upon the surface, the image loses clarity; it is at this moment that drawing intervenes to reconstruct it.

Paper is both condition and tool, allowing what takes place upon the sheet to be extended. A doorway through which one may re-enter with the freedom to intervene and alter structures, establishing a working order that shifts from the materialization of the image toward the construction of a plastic language. There are substances that operate beyond the stable realm of objects, overflowing their boundaries and persisting in other forms. Smoke, for example, when it emerges through the act of releasing air after it has been inhaled. The lips close into a circle that prolongs the shape of the cigarette filter. The object produced to be consumed and discarded does not disappear entirely; rather, it shifts, adheres, and remains, almost as though it responded to our gestures and desires. Thus, even what we consider ephemeral or residual continues to attach itself to us, calling its apparent disappearance into question.

The exhibition moves through this same phase of dispersion and coating, where vapor/smoke reorganizes itself as matter. Without becoming exhausted, it adheres and continues to circulate throughout the environment, covering both the space and the works, as though every object had been frozen at the precise instant before depletion. In doing so, it proposes a new form of coexistence.

…and the cigarette ultimately comes to be extinguished as it is pressed against a surface, leaving behind a perfect circular mark.