Tatiana Trouvé Explores Time and Memory in “On the Eve of Never Leaving”

Named for the translated title of the poem Na Véspera de Não Partir Nunca by Álvaro de Campos (one of the heteronyms of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa), the works on view serve as visual paradoxes in which the past and future stand still—similar to the writings of de Campos, which often speak of time and nothingness.

In the center of Gagosian’s gallery floor, visitors will find the sculpted form of an uprooted tree, overturned and submerged in a pool of water, residing in the middle of a cracked and deteriorating concrete floor. Entitled The Shaman, the piece examines the revelatory power of the tree in an installation that brings its viewers to portal between many worlds at once, including decay and new life and growth and debris.

Making up the exhibition’s drawings are a selection of works from Trouvé’s ongoing “Les dessouvenus” and “The Great Atlas of Disorientation” series, which are made using similar processes that highlight the impossibility of replicating a succession of chance events. To create the environmental dramas of “Les dessouvenus,” the artist submerges sheets of colored paper in bleach before drawing on their surfaces with pencil. For “The Great Atlas of Disorientation,” a similar unpredictable bleached effect is created, instead using water color paint.