“At the end of the day, we’re all looking for a hook(-up)”: Paul Hameline’s monthly dispatch

Date: 13th February 2024
Location: London
Music: 21 Savage, Alicia Keys, Prurient
Book: Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
Cigarettes: 17
Meal: two triple shot iced coffees, three Perriers, one salmon bagel
Exhibition: Gerhard Richter at David Zwirner

Wretched ways to love.
A smudge, a stain, a past: history.

Censored memories.
Forbidden pleasures erased from one’s mind; from one’s life.
Ever realise how easily the human tends to forget, to dismiss, to disdain?

Visions overcast by despair and pain.
Heliogabalus. The sun adorer, the fallen emperor.
His scorching gold dried out blood in the blazing sand.
Burning fields long before burning bushes.

The architecture of deceit, out-duelling truth mechanics.
Something was there, something was removed.
An emerald nebula constricted by an authoritarian dark matter.
Like termites, smog and pollution infesting bodies and minds.
The rigour yet discrete (dis)pleasure of the human hand.
Dissolving the foundations of its own hope.
Concealed debauchery, hidden decadence.
Could go wrong, terribly wrong…
Perhaps in order to go terribly… right?
Hope versus action.
Revolutionary acts of spasmodic truths.
You’ve got to laugh through the tears to protect your eyes from seeing the sun. To appreciate it.
Family photos nailed to a brick. A broken window becomes a broken home.
Family photos lacerated by a thousand shards of the heart you broke.
(Helped by a brick).

Exhibition: Douglas Gordon at Gagosian

Eyes are windows to the soul, so they say.
Or could it be that eyes are the windows to one’s heart?
They’re the body’s most vulnerable organ.
They talk too much. Revealing too much about oneself.
People tend to assume another’s emotions and thoughts by staring into their eyes.
Similar to staring into the sea.
They see fear, lies, anger, charm, lust, envy.
They see themselves.

Eye: irreparable living organ of circular shape (micro).
Earth: irreparable living organ of circular shape (macro).

Mirrors to the soul.
Telltale when you’re high, telltale when you’re down.
Accomplices or traitors to their own body?

Extracting salty waters from deep within, as a means to cleanse your heart.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is a tyrant.
Even a cheat.
The bruised and the harmed. The violence of beauty in all its synchronicity.
Fractured cornea staring at an eclipse in all its splendour and repercussion.

Close your eyes, open your mouth.
Better off not knowing what they’re putting in it.
The languorous yet assassin-like embrace of ill-intentioned deities.

Ignorance is bliss, so they say.
Remain in that state while your insides slowly disintegrate, day by day.

Exhibition: Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles

Bonehead versus Latin opera.
Do you remember the opening credits to Haneke’s Funny Games?

A trace, a mark, intertwined within its burned ruins.
Words tend to linger, even outshining their author.

Bias views of the world moving towards the unclarity of a fast-approaching future.

The old world’s narration is decaying.
History repeats itself; dark times are close.

The falsity of a golden idol at the top of a high rise.
A desolate greeting. A solitary life.
Solitude is a great way to kill time.
Vertigo and the void. Two lovers whispering in one’s ear: “come with us, just a little closer”.
Colours fade away and the world is turning grey.
Even though we’re in spring.

The sun at arm’s reach. Competing with Icarus.
Towers of Babylon made of concrete and steel.
Bones as pillars, rotting away in such putrescent ways.

Date: 14th February 2024
Location: London
Music: Hype Williams, Four Tops, Axxturel
Book: Don’t Take Care of Yourself. Lettres à Christine. 1974-1983 by Lizzy Mercier-Descloux
Cigarettes: 30
Meal: wiener schnitzel and pickled cucumber
Exhibition: Nika Kutateladze at Modern Art

Timing is key.
‘They were born together, They will die together’
‘Feral jackals live silently with human figures’.
They will stab you in the back.
All the while whispering loving words to you.

As the cold blade twists through your ribs making its way up to your heart.
They kiss your neck and smile at you.
Blades camouflaged as embraces.
Disguised signs of brutal force draped in deteriorating attention.
Spray paint and graffiti as concealers of hidden veracities.

Mythologies become urban legends and scary realities.
Past recollection of unhealed wounds.
Carried across life as medals of achievements.
Medals of pain and sorrow pinned to one’s chest.

Exhibition: Sagg Napoli at Rodeo

Chapped lips punctured by velvety arrows.
Lips made to be kissed.
Shivers and whispers are precursors of serotonin.

Arrows as skin hooks. At the end of the day, we’re all looking for a hook(-up).
Be true to yourself and others.
Flames to dust, lovers to friends.
All good things come to an end.

Life is absurd. Life is abstract.
Undulating through pits and cracks.
Through smoke and fog.
Broken dreams. Discouraged hopes.
Disaster and madness unfold, leading the way to love and revolt.

The enchanting scent of mimosa, Earl Grey, tarmac and kerosene.
Patience: even roses can grow on highways, surrounded by toxic fumes.

Date: 2nd March 2024
Location: Paris
Music: Florence Sinclair, Scott Walker, Rick Farin
Book: Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabane
Cigarettes: 6
Meal: one chicken karaage donburi
Show: Arca at the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection

Arca in Sanskrit: subject of adoration and worship

Breathing together in a concrete turbine.
Could be Heaven. Could be Hell. Perhaps in-between, purgatory.
Call it limbo, life, whatever pleases you.
Sticky atmosphere.
Sulfury, metallurgic palpability to the air.

Shadows (us) impatiently waiting for the bearer of light (her).
Hundreds of hearts pounding, beating, throbbing as one.
A stripped landscape at the epicentre of the room.
A stage.

At the centre, standing alone, isolated.
Metallic exoskeleton composed of stage lights.
An intricate trap.
Like a fist about to be clenched crushing whomever’s in it.
A praying mantis made of steel and electric veins.
Menacing while remaining dormant.

Having reached the climax during the reproductive coitus, praying mantis behead and devour their male companions.

Suddenly it’s dark, suddenly it’s red.
Red lights blinking in lethargy.
A muted state of emergency.
A silent alarm, an alarming silence.

Tension develops. Sharp as a blade.
We’re standing on the razor’s edge, alert.
Imminent arrival. She’s coming.

From the top of Ando’s disc-like structure, Arca is descending.
As she reaches down to the land of shadows.
The apprehension is discernible within the spectator’s shortness of breath.

Draped in a shiny leather coat. Her skin is bare.
Patent black heels, like daggers. Long shiny black hair, like whips.
Shiny boots of leather.
Whiplash girl child in the dark.

Strike dear mistress and cure his heart.
She walks, floats, and glides through our enthralled bodies.
Some stand still. Some follow. Some lurk.
Stalked by an entourage of mechanical eyes.

It’s raw, obscure, disquieting.

On stage, her armour is off.
She reaches out for her sterilised tools.
Tools of past eras. Instruments of the future.

Whipping her hair while defying all gravitational laws within the darkness and the abyss.
All of a sudden – strike.
Light shines through, striking from within.
An iron bulb as a sinister sun, sinking from the sky.

Swapping from a classical piano to a pioneering one.
An ominous melody in a rasping symphony.

Flowers at the piano’s feet.
Subs at Arca’s feet.
A tale of love.
Crouched in the flowers.
She stands and breathes over the tormented petals.

Three threads of light pulsating against the cement.
A beating heart.
In mythology, three goddesses determined human destinies.
Clotho was in charge of human fate. Lachesis distributed it. Atropos ended it.
Hands dancing and racing. As fast as a bird trying to flee its hunter.

Ever tried to grasp smoke with one’s hand?
Or used scissors to cut through air?
Does everyone wish to escape their predator?