Space-time continuum appears when we need to place events in exact moment, in defined territory. You can be only in one place at time, but simultaneously you can carry several places in you. Those spatial memories can relate to each other, and reflect in relation, they may affect themselves, can battle between each other, have a willingness to unite or be lost in each other’s memory. We’re looking for this desired place into other places, wherever we are simultaneously we start to virtually rebuild them, in our internal environment, on now-and-here ground. Places can reflect on each other only if we immerse deeply in them and if we bring pieces of them back, from one to another. Theo Guicheron-Lopez re-invents the topography of places with which he has personal relation. This sculptural proces is both intimate and universal. It is a material research that draw its path from the very beginning of civilisations and first city-like forms to the contemporary infrastructure of everyday life. Theo Guicheron-Lopez immerses into spaces and he rebuilds signs attached to them, their unique features whose appears like sets of material and virtual circumstances rather than scraps of reality. All that is constituted by topographical meanings and artist’s own sculptural code. The gothic motive typically attached to the regional architectural style can relate to the historical trajectory of sculptural choices made centuries ago, which in its source were forgotten, or the dominant structures of visual powers decided to erase its origin.

The one of the first ever known maps made by human is a piece of stone prepared to carry and to navigate by touch alongside the road. Its sculpted side relates to the form of the edge of the seacoast*. The navigation was based on a process of touching and following the line of grooves on the stone model of the coastal territory during the road into the final point. The crucial was to keep following the line and its key points, while following the edges of the grounded territory, and which visual indicators were giving the hope of going the right direction. The object itself had a strong relation to drawing, the line was an indicator and a moving hand – a navigator. We can find this relation of spatiality and drawing process in Theo’s sculptural practice. In his works we can observe lines following volatile shapes, traversing paths from starting point to its destination, from here to there, from now to another times. On those lines his spatial signs are attached as displaced moments of here-and-now.

Another historical maps were created to navigate not on the ground but between grounds – on the sea. They were used by navigators travelling between Marshall Islands Archipelago**. Wooden sticks were defining the watery distances between, while little shells were designates positions of islands. Experiencing the art of Theo Guicheron-Lopez we pass through those types of maps, where each detail is a type of refugium or an island, where is possible to stop by or rest longer. It is this secret power of his works. It’n not necessary to see everything to experience the whole. Each detail brings the essence of here-and-now moment, discreetness of forms doesn’t hurry the viewer up. The relation between matter and map is the one in the center of Theo’s interest. Key point is a symbol that states the position of the object or real-world feature on the map surface. On nowadays maps we can be omnipresent users, while individual experience is limited to well-described topographies created and dominated by powerful elites. According to the post-representational cartography map is never fully finished. Seeing the world as a whole can be both liberating and depriving.

In recent period Theo’s method is affected by the transformation. Bitumen forms used by Theo at the beginning of his practice were far more grained, needed more hard tooling. It was the type of work related closely to the stone carving. Those object were visually heavier, bitumen forms were occupying attention and disorientating the space. Current bitumen elements are discrete points, waved into the tissue of sculptured model, to which possibility of arriving leads the viewer by deliberately navigated signs. They’re key points on the map rather than territory itself. Besides that carving in bitumen is a practice endangering the health. Petroleum-based substance forced artist to re-think the strategy as impact on health and surroundings in this type of work is not easy to minimalize. The global system of dependencies starting with colonisation makes us accustomed to the anonymity of the matter. In a globalised world matter looses its origin. Locality can be create by multilayered features coming from afar. Those extracted parts of our reality used by Theo (wood, stone, bitumen) rediscover their origin by the process of placing them on his cartographical structures. The omnipresence of materials led us to the limited sensibility of truly sensed matter while in Theo’s artistic activity they reinvent its sensual potential.

Theo Guicheron-Lopez in the strategy of reproduction, displacement and re-definition of architectural elements connected with natural materials like stone, wood and self-collected bitumen pieces is creating the research space for future discovering. Sculptures presented in this exhibition have double character. They are finished artistic forms but as well an atlas of visual codes anchored in spatial side of our existence which is the main theme the artistic long-lasting research. This artistic expression find its occurrence thanks to his sensibility of the matter, which we can relate to Catherine Malabou’s concept of substantial plasticity***. His consciousness of a sculptural process includes both the sense of bringing things to life-forms and its destructive aspect – irreversibility and disappearance.

* Benjamin J, O’Leary M, McDonald J, Wiseman C, McCarthy J, et al. Aboriginal artefacts on the continental shelf reveal ancient drowned cultural landscapes in northwest Australia. PLOS ONE 15(7) [2022]. ** Genz, Joseph H., Breaking the shell: voyaging from nuclear refugees to people of the sea in the Marshall Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2018]. *** Malabou, C.. Ontologie de l’accident: Essai sur la plasticité destructrice. Editions Léo Scheer. Paris [2009].

— Patrycja Plich