Sreshta Rit Premnath - Below Blue Horizon
10.01 - 15.02.2019
curated by Tiago de Abreu Pinto

When Koji Kamoji says “You can concentrate better when you’re on your knees,” in response to a query about his practice of painting in the kneeling position, I think he is also speaking about the contingency of the ground on which he stands. He understands that he is always on the verge of collapse, and it is this perpetual state of doubt and ungrounding that focuses the mind. I would like to call this clarity of mind, when the knees buckle, an ethics of uncertainty. The gaze of a practitioner always trained below the sublime sky and towards a ground.

A famous sequence transpires in the movie that the Kaczyński brothers (formers Prime Minister and President of Poland) starred in as children. The two young blondes creep up to the setting moon and capture it as it dips below the dark horizon. A fairytale that now seems an omen portending the political darkness that has spread around the world. As isolationist nationalism condemns immigrants to wait–for refuge, for work, for a visa, for respite–feet in one land, eyes trained towards another. Beyond the horizon is possibility and anticipation. Beyond the horizon is memory and longing. But below the horizon is the here and now, where we place our feet in the moment of eclipse, when the lights go out, and the vanishing point dips below the dark horizon, not there but here.