MOSAICOS

Julio Silva, (1930) painter and sculptor.
Saúl Yurkievich (1931-2005), poet.

26.05.07 –  23.06.07

Kuntur Gallery presents MOSAICOS, an exhibition by Julio Silva and his friend the poet Saúl Yurkievich, who died in 2005 as a result of a car crash.  Julio Silva has taken the poems of Yurkievich and used them as a point of departure for a series of watercolours on paper.

Mozaïeken, veelkleurigheid van woorden, geschreven tussen beelden, versmolten met de schaduw van de toren van Babel; de schiftgeleerde speelde met het alfabet, gehurkt op perzische tapijten, geweven met de draden der vriendschap. Als druppels van benzoe destilleerden zijn gedichten; amber en jasmijn parfumeerden iedere letter die op weg ging op zoek naar zijn nest, om zich te nestelen in de ruimte die de dichter vrijliet en waar de schilder zijn plaats innam.

Wanneer je ze hardop leest, zal de echo, kudde-instinct van de schaduwen, ons bereiken als een boodschap van herauten en het beeld op onze pupillen achterlaten.

Ogen, duizenden ogen, die niet willen knipperen om maar niets te missen van het spellen der woorden. De dichter doet ze klinken als getrommel, eenieder die de groep rond de vuurpot nadert, uitnodigend lezer te zijn opdat de vlammen aanwakkeren en niet uitdoven.

-Julio Silva

Julio Silva (Argentina, 1930) is a painter living and working in Paris and Torano. Silva has been working in Paris since the fifties and has been celebrated for his collaboration with the writer Julio Cortázar. The result of these collaborations were a series of books, Les discours du Pince-Gueule (1966), La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos (1967), Ultimo round (1969) en Silvalandia(1977).
Since 1970 Silva has been active as a sculptor. His work forms part of private and public collections. Some of his work is part of public space, Pyegemalion, Forum Les Halles and  Dame Lune,  La Défense in Paris. In 2001 the fountain Panta Rhei was revealed  Massa (Toscane). Silva has had solo exhibitions Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and several European, Latin- and North American galleries.

Saúl Yurkievich (Argentina, 1931- Paris, 2005) was a poet, a literary critic and an art. To Yurkievich both disciplines were complimentary, two ways of being creative with the written word, sometimes conceptually, then metaphorically or analytically. As a critic Yurkievich was aspecialist of the work amongst others of Cortàzar, Neruda, Vallejo, Borges, Paz and the avant-garde art and literature. In 1984 he wins the Pushcart Prize for the best article in a literary magazine in the English language. In 1988 the  Fondation Royaumont dedicates an entire seminary to the poetry of Yurkievich. Yurkievich has held the Mellon-chair at the university of Pittsburgh and the Tinkel-chair at the university of Chicago. He has also been a professor at Columbia University, Harvard University and John Hopkins Institute.