Red Skyline | Shir Moran
April 9th - May 14th, 2021
© Shir Moram
A black toy duck, forced to be happy because of the smile painted on his face in some faraway factory. This time he had hit rock bottom, on the floor of a dirty booth, among piles of scraps. Above him, four long legs stretch upward. A curtain covers the faces, but the bodies are talking, making a scene for a naïve passerby, or maybe a horny peeper. Perhaps they are all playing some kind of fixed game, and only the duck doesn’t realize it.
Waiting for his name to be announced. Dressed in a shiny white suit, he straightens himself and holds his breath. The crowd cheers and turns into a mob: Characters shedding their skin, faces twist and melt, masks fall, and desires revealed. The witch envisioned it all while sitting in the kitchen with her precious cat.
The sun appears in the sky but shines in the room. In the painting by De Chirico, a knight on a horse returns to the castle, but in fact, it’s only his shadow that returns. Encircled by black triangles, a serrated shadow. A woman returns home riding on a dog. Together they are like a stain, a black creature, a ruined sticker on a window that is a door.
Staring out a window or a glass bottle, a random screen, a monitor, or even through a person in the room. Staring and not seeing. When eyes are open, but wide shut. She has just woke up, but already lingers for her next sleep.
Torment and pleasure are sometimes alike, and so, getting dressed is sometimes pleasurable and sometimes tormenting. Scrutinizing measurements, colors, fabrics and wrinkles. Taking off, taking out, laying garments on my bed. All dressed up, I go to the mirror; what will it reveal and what does it want? Trying different looks while imagining various situations: glances, plots, and betrayals. In most cases, reality is unsatisfying.
A night of dancing, legs in fishnet tights twisting and moving. A streak of blinding light and everywhere else a haze. I don’t remember what happened, just flickers. With whom did I speak and about what? I see my mouth move but cannot hear the words, just a broken movement and the buzzing of flies.
Two trash cans tied by force of habit. Are they destined to be together forever? Marked with identical numbers—840, maybe they are brothers after all? Tied to the street and one to another in bonds of love, a chain with a lock, so that they won’t be stolen or separated. Together they will stink day and night. The graphite spirit of a murderer fled back into an old painting.
“Fires blazing on the horizon; rivers of blood in all the streets; and the frenzied dancing of the survivors, of those who are still spared, around the bodies of the dead! A cheerful optimism beamed from the face of the poet as he evoked the horrors in store for the near future”.
I am cold and I think about fire to warm up. I envision destruction, a ready-made cinematic fantasy and romance of blood. The sun sets in the pink clouds. The heroine takes out her horse, and this time she will escape. The background is orange and bright. She looks one last time at her house, fire reflecting in her pupils.
“The circle of an empty day is brutal, and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.”
People see themselves in the mirror; it is nothing and everyone. It invites a glance from the outside, reflecting but opaque. It does not let color in, so it stands on the surface, frozen and disconnected, Waiting, pleading for a gaze. The vampire tried to wear the flowered hat with the help of a marker and brush, but still couldn’t see himself.
A cap embellished with rose, on the head of a girl with a blond braid, wearing jeans with a red patch. She said that she walked around hungry for a whole day, dreaming about a small stage ready for the show. Another woman, headless, held scissors and fingernails outside a boarded up structure. Masses of cockroaches circled about, scurrying among garbage cans and disappearing into cracks in the sidewalk.
A black glove appeared from inside a transparent bluish curtain. It seems full of spirit and without a body inside guiding it. It handed the actress a mask, like an invitation to a play. The actress sat down and smiled. She had been waiting for this moment for a while. Then, the dog stood up on its hind legs and spoke.
I dreamt I was waiting for my man. He had cold, blue velvet eyes. I stood there exactly at twelve midnight, a lobby full of carpets and dust. In the middle, on a tall pedestal stood a bust, like a decapitated head with a wig. Opposite, on a fluffy sofa, sat a woman with a dog resting along her bare feet. It looked at me with sad eyes. Maybe they are also waiting. I looked down at my crossed hands; they looked like pincers. All of a sudden, a wolf appeared at the entrance. It stood up like a person. Instinctively, I knelt on my knees in submission. I looked for the last time out the window and saw the skyline is red.
Graphite spirit inspired by the painting by Edvard Munch, The Murder in the Avenue, 1919.
Klaus Mann, Mephisto, (New York, Random House, 1977), p. 216.
Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment, (New York, Europa Editions, 2005), p. 168.
Girogio de Chirico, Return to the Castle, 1969.
