Foco Gallery is pleased to present Chest against the back, a solo show by Manuel Tainha

Opening: February 08th from 6pm

CHEST AGAINST THE BACK                                                                                                                    08.02.24 | 23..03.24

Manuel Tainha

They say on a clear day, you can see forever 
the word ruin tripping more easily off the tongue than 
ar qui tec ture,
sitting dangerously on your throat. Permanence was never meant to be pronounced
as  m  e  m  o  r  y    a  i  d: a flash reminder that rendering invisible does not 
make absent.

chest against the back heart 
against the ribs back 
against
against the 
wall the first wall before anything else, instantly trading its architectural status for a silent contingency
of what’s here
and
over
there
mapping the tacit urgency in shaping the world between
you and me. I wonder often if you’ve experienced time
around the edges. Not sure. Does it belong to the future, or the past? None. Try
a spiraled elsewhere set against a long 
gone 
hum of metal on metal, the lingering dust on the
clothes you wore back then, the unspoken accumulation of
finger paper cuts framed as work,
not violence – a lingo only erosion can speak in.

you asked me what time is this place. You know, 
the idea of the future seems to be formed somewhat before the idea of the past
before
you could mutter vale do silêncio as a full sentence, you knew how you would grip it. Afterall, 
bodily risk was always the most pleasurable mode of remembering:
ripping 
open book spines body 
heat staining time-kissed pages discovering 
the malleability in resistance the tenderness in compression the violence in permanence scattered all over the tension of your hands. I hope this scaffolds you
for a while

as you attempt to synchronize memory with split-second glimpses of the past keep in mind
the most perennial of narratives unfold through ruins, 
ghost images subtitled as desire,
disappearing before your own eyes 
fists clenched darkened knees chest
still
against the back. 

Inês Mena Silva