Drawings

Was it the verb before? And before it, time. With it, the first forms in pictorial, imagetic drawings. Animals, objects, symbols painted on the wall to record information. And time. Forms simplify and abstract to create sounds, phonemes, and then generate codes: lines create drawn letters that together make “sky”, “house”, “horse” – with distinct strokes from small clustered dots, from the triangle superimposed on a square or a torso and four legs.

Drawn letters make “float”, which before meaning the state of a body suspended in the air or on a liquid surface, comes from the Latin “fluctus”: “wave” or “undulatory movement”, therefore, as a verb, it referred to the act of oscillating, moving in waves.
In the dictionary, the word is explained, in poetry, it becomes a primordial image again. To be distracted from this simple sentence can confuse us in Amália Giacomini’s exhibition. While imagining that I had already understood it by relating recent works on mathematics, catenary lines, curved chains suspended under the weight of gravity, she commented: “I have been thinking about sea creatures. I see stingrays.” The letters that formed wave, draw an animal, a body suspended in space. Bound to the glossary, I didn’t see…

Manoel de Barros would say:
In the unbeginning was the verb.
Only later came the delirium of the verb.
The delirium of the verb was at the beginning, there, where the child says:
I hear the color of the birds.
The child doesn’t know that the verb “hear” doesn’t
Work for color, but for sound.
So if the child changes the function of a verb, it deliriums.
And therefore.
In poetry that is the poet’s voice,
which is the voice
Of making births –
The verb has to catch delirium.

Installation or exhibition, as you wish to name it, “Fluctuations, by Amália Giacomini is precisely the alteration of function, delirium of the verb, geometry in sea, sculpted drawing. Drawing: this was the other name that the artist had thought for the works. In the unbeginning was the verb and I didn’t see. We stick with both: image and word.

Paulo Kassab Jr.

1. Catenaries are mathematical curves that naturally arise when a flexible chain or uniformly flexible cable is suspended between two fixed points. The shape of the catenary is determined by the force of gravity acting on the cable, resulting in a smooth and symmetrical curve. This type of curve has been studied in various fields, including mathematics, physics, and engineering, due to its relevance in practical problems related to material resistance, such as the construction of suspension bridges and the modeling of electrical cables and chains. The term “catenary” comes from the Latin “catena,” meaning “chain.”