Page 34 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing
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Pictorial turn. the
There is also, among those stills, Rebus – an
intriguing vision of a woman whose body is after-life of the Still
almost entirely covered by a squared folded
impenetrable metal. The image behind the
strange shield could only be guessed, as in
a rebus. Like in the Unveiling, the screen
disguising the woman’s body in Rebus opens up
sporadically in some windows torn in the metal,
to display esoteric symbols. Their meaning is
no doubt significative – like everything Hagea
does. But I must insist on the metapictorial
effect of the image because this seems to be also
part of the artist’s project. Again, Hagea plays
with visibilities and invisibilities.
We may agree that the main discourse or, the text
of the picture, is the woman’s body, the eternal
sacrosanct mystery. The split meta-pictures in
the windows are no doubt attempts to penetrate
this ineffable enigma. They are meta-pictures,
or para-texts, like in para/ergon. Let us come
close to this important term. Paragon is what
is added to the work (ergon), and according
to some interpretations, it is what might be in
conflict with it. As Derrida puts it, “parergon
is against, next to and extra to the ergon, the
work done.” In Hagea’s opus (ergon), these
parergonal images are presumably some visual
glossing around and about that impenetrable
vision, which could only be contemplated as in a
mirror, placed in a kind of mis en abîme. Indeed, Rebus as Paragon
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