Four Corners exist just the same in a closed room as at the crossing of two roads. “Can we put a box of red pencils on every table?” said The Fool. Let the game begin.
1 – WOOD
Why do we want to control and know everything? Why not make peace with uncertainty instead? After all, what would the sphinx be without its secret? A corpse at the bottom of the ocean. That´s a very human obsession, yes sir. So much so that “person,” etymologically, means “mask.” We struggle deeply to accept mystery. Pieces like half-open windows. The mischief of someone peeking through. The doubt. One thing is what you see; another is what you want to see.
Fact: All the wooden pieces are made from cedar scraps, each carrying a memory already buried and secret—God only knows what stories those pieces of lumber hold.
2 – METAL
Theater? Celebration? No rest?[1] How? The question is both an invitation and a challenge. Let’s recall that Stanislavski exercise where one had to say “good afternoon” in 40 different ways.
According to Costa, these are the endings to specific questions, fragments from some supposed charade riddles. I don’t believe it. They could be the ending of any other inquiry. Or the beginning. A word stripped of context, your distorted image, a mirror enquiring you.
Three pieces, 30 x 30 cm. Notice the recurrence of the number 3. The Empress in tarot. The recurrence of 4 as well: the Emperor. Triangle and square. Movement, creation, trinity. Then structure, stability, matter. Three are also the central themes of this show: play, nostalgia, and mystery.
His father had a 1954 Dodge. The car was another illusion—it was never what we thought. Its color and several parts were never original. The sorrow of anagnorisis, the weariness of disillusion: Fatigue 54. A longing for the ’50s, for what could have been. Light symbolizes knowledge, the pursuit of truth—but also projection, yearning. And then, another piece that blurs the perimeter, slipping into that crack separating sculpture from painting and installation.
At this show, it is you who completes each work, each story. And this happens in the paradox: the impossibility of knowing with certainty. Something becomes part of the story as the door suggests, but does not open. Unlocking codes remain immovable. What is hidden? Perhaps nothing. It’s you facing yourself—you are the key. Where do you want to go? The oracle is never conclusive.
Take note: the real game is the exhibition itself—a labyrinth full of riddles with no definitive answers.
3 – CONCRETE
Let yourself dream—may nothing disturb you. All the glory of the world fits in a grain of corn, and all your future in a marble. The artist is the homo ludens par excellence. The man who plays. And he is as close to a child’s innocent game as he is to an adult’s impure one. There’s always something at stake. Gray works in a gray space. Marbles, a national tradition, a personal memory.
4 – FABRIC
23 pieces. 23 was his father’s lucky number. It is also “vapor” in the Cuban charade—the untamable, the hard to contain. One piece is missing: number 24. And this disruption of balance, along with the formal accident, the stain that looks like blood, produces a sense of unease, of a cycle that won’t quite close. 23 liters of what? Gasoline, paint, milk, water— you name it. Everything is missing. How much more is left? The eternal crisis in Cuba. And Cuba is a subtle, almost spectral, presence in the exhibition.
Four Corners, dare I say (with fear of being wrong), is a show about Nostalgia. Beyond Play and Mystery. Coldness reigns over the whole group. Each piece is cold in its discreet mysticism, in its meticulous geometry, in its materiality, in its rawness and sobriety. And cold is distant. And distant is enigmatic. Like memories. In any case, here the question is only posed (each viewer will decide which one) — or rather, the possibility of the question. The labyrinth has more than Four Corners.
Text by: Magela Garcés