Silver. RICHARD GARET
(Obs 2012)

In his creative process Richard Garet is always exploring new methods, new sources, new materialities and new media; this rigorous and explorative process has been delivering a progressively clearer vision of something Garet foresees and envision as an artist, and that he wants to make it sensibly experiential to the listeners of his work.

For me the work of Garet has always had some sort of ephiphanic character, like a warning of a change to come; this was quite visible on on his 2008 release ‘L’Avenir’, a work I feel is about the expectation and the anticipation of world-changing moments; ‘Silver’ instead seems more about the aftermath of these events. This reflection might relate with the artist’s exploration of materials and objects with a history imprinted through the lapse of time. Is not the histories what at the end matter, but it’s time as printer, as matter in the creative process what is relevant.

In some way I feel like the work of Richard Garet is about the stillness of moments; about stillness and eternity, about a sense of time that transcends past, present and future. Quoting Roland Barthes:

‘In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott’s psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.’

The catastrophe Richard Gare did foresee and warned through ‘L’Avenir’ is some way occurred and then it came ‘Silver’; Here Garet looks to re-enact this catastrophe by the activation of the history imprinted in the objects that prevailed the catastrophe. The initial activation is the processing of these materials by the artist and the subsequent images generated on this process. A second activation occurs when the listener imprints his own history, his own catastrophe, on the revealed images.

We can depict from Barthes quote that time is an immanent warning, the warning of the catastrophe as time is evidence of future death, but Richard Garet’s work transcends the merely organic, it’s about the essence of life, about the emotions and the images, objects and universes that this emotions build in our conscience. About the questions that time presents formally and conceptually, and about the artist who in order who address this questions, grabs fistfuls of sand that slips through his fingers to an empty hand. I say ‘Silver’ is about the trace, and more specifically about the revealing and anticipating nature of the trace.

-John McEnroe

Richard Garet website
Obs website