Erick Beltran – The Unfothomable Part

La Synagogue de Delme, Delme
June 2 – September 30, 2012

Erick Beltrán’s work often takes the form of printouts, newspapers, leaflets, publications and more recently sculptures—text and image structures that spread throughout the exhibition spaces… He is fascinated by how information circulates and is organised, as it conditions how we understand the world.

More broadly, at the heart of his approach are language and our relationship with knowledge: his diagrams, plans and graphical systems are so many attempts to explain the world. Their diverse formulations produce labyrinthine visual effects. Penetrating Erick Beltrán’s work means venturing into a mental cartography that unfolds at the scale of a building, and you have to let yourself get lost in it. Like philosophical machines, his works crystallize ideas that proliferate like a forest of signs, where science and the supposed objectivity of demonstration are tinged with an
element of irrationality.

For the Synagogue de Delme, Erick Beltrán is producing a new installation that fills the art centre’s main architectural void, and plunges the viewer’s eyes and body into an abyss of mingled texts and images. The structure designed by Beltrán takes on two different appearances depending on the point of view: from the ground floor, it is a pyramidical tree, growing and reaching up into the air; from upstairs, it is an abyss, a plunge into the innermost depths of the human psyche.

And that, indeed, is what it is really all about: the pyramidical tree condenses the artist’s most recent investigations into notions of individual and collective consciousness, starting from the premise that the Self does not exist, that it is a purely ideological construct, a scale of values on which modern Western society has based a very complacent interpretation of the world. Eric Beltrán does not believe in a unity of the Self locked in a constant struggle against collectivity. This tension between group and individual gives rise to the illusion that human beings channel a collection of multiple, fragmentary voices. It is
an image such as this that makes us what we are, and at the same time pushes us towards that “unfathomable part”, that abstract, infinite black hole of consciousness, into which
we will never be finished falling.

Erick Beltrán explores anomalies, strange and unexplainable facts of human behaviour, asking who is speaking in a Man when he sinks into madness or collective hysteria. What new consciousness is interfering with consciousness, when this seems to be obliterating itself to the benefit of humanity’s darkest inclinations? Beyond the project’s metaphysical aspect, what Erick Beltrán is offering is an eminently visual installation. Both body and spirit are engaged in a structure that must be approached as a navigational tool. This tool enables us to reconsider the nature of the prevailing ideologies, and to propose new systems of values and relationships.

Marie Cozette

Practical Info
La synagogue de Delme Center for contemporary art
33 rue Poincaré 57590 Delme
+33(0)3 87 01 43 42 / cac.delme@wanadoo.fr
www.cac-synagoguedelme.org

Exhibition open 2 June – 30 September 2012.
Wednesday-Saturday: 2-6pm, Sundays : 11am-6pm.
The Art Center will be closed on 15th August.
Admission free.