There are territories that can be recognized on a map. Others, through memory. And then there are those that remain within the body, like a landscape one carries with them after leaving. In Kilian Glasner’s work, territory appears not only as that which is represented, but as that which constitutes the very substance of the painting. Born in Recife and also connected to the landscapes of the Catimbau Valley, the artist rediscovers an elemental material in the soil of the sertão: saibro (orange laterite). Gathered from the earth, transformed into pigment, and applied to the surface, the soil ceases to be a subject and becomes an image. This process shifts the painting from representation to an experience of territoriality. What lies before our eyes is not simply a depicted place, but a kind of condensed territory: memory, matter, experience, and conflict. There is something profoundly cartographic in these works. Fences, lines, fields, structures, and boundaries organize the space as if every landscape carried within it the history of the borders that shaped it. But these borders are never neutral. They pertain to possession, belonging, exclusion, and dispute.

The tennis court that appears as lines in the works introduces a particularly precise image of this condition. The game is marked by a line that separates the sides and defines the contest: two territories facing one another, under rules that establish that, in the end, there will be a winner. The court thus becomes an allegory for other, much larger disputes—the demarcation of land, recognition, the right to remain, the definition of who may occupy a given space and who will be removed from it. But Kilian reminds us that no geography is entirely stable. The lines that delimit it are also lines of tension. Ailton Krenak, in his critique of what he calls “humanity” as an exclusionary category, insists that the earth is not a resource to be taken, but a body of which we are a part—so that every fence, every title, every demarcation line constitutes not only a division of space, but a fracture in the way we exist in relation to one another. Territory is a living relationship, constituted by memory, by beings, by rivers, by ancestors, and by ways of inhabiting.

It is at this point that gravel takes on a dimension that goes beyond a mere choice of color. The artist does not paint the earth; he paints with the earth. The material carries with it a history that predates the image. There is something almost archaeological about this gesture: extracting from the ground what will be returned to the surface in the form of a painting.

The notion of “used territory,” developed by geographer Milton Santos, also helps us to think about these works. For him, territory is not an inert or merely delimited space, but a space energized by life, relationships, contradictions, and acts of resistance that take place within it. A space produced by marks, rhythms, repetitions, and gestures of appropriation. Perhaps this is why Glasner’s figures always seem to be in a state of displacement. Bodies that cross, glide, float, or remain before a boundary. These are bodies that do not simply inhabit a space, but negotiate with it. The painting thus becomes a kind of force field. The red of the pigment, the roughness of the gravel, the lines that cut through the landscape, and the fences that mark its boundaries turn the surface into a place where something is constantly in dispute.

Deep down, perhaps the artist is questioning something fundamental: when we say “my territory,” what are we talking about?

A piece of land?
A memory?
A place of origin?
A body?
A border?
Or the right to continue belonging somewhere?

 

Paulo Kassab Jr.