On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies

Three superimposed slow motion images of an egg frying in a pan coalescing gradually into one combined image sound as though the films of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, showing in On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, are likely to live up to the stereotype of contemporary art as superficial comedy. Instead, the visitor paying careful (even prayerful) attention will be surprised and rewarded because that selfsame careful attention is what Gusmão and Paiva have shown in the creation of their art.

Their film of frying eggs reveals the beauty in a process of change which is often only viewed pragmatically. This is the commonplace becoming extraordinary or, in George Herbert’s memorable phrase, ‘heaven in ordinary’. Their choice of three superimposed images also provides the frisson of a trinity of eggs coalescing into one substance. That this connotation is not unintended is hinted at through the description of their films as “poetic philosophical fiction” and an accompanying artist’s book, which is an anthology of texts sourced from thinkers, poets and theologians presenting a range of ideas focused around the existence of God. What can be found then in these wonder-full films is the combination of contemplative meditations on ordinary objects with philosophical explorations of the nature of belief.

Their work exudes a playful inventiveness that makes us look again because they have originally looked at their subjects with real attention. Such attention is, to my mind, an aspect of prayer. 'Experiment with Effluvium' shows the splash and ripples of a skimming stone on water. Their slow-mo technique and the framing of the shots reveal the beauty of chaos evolving into symmetry. Slow motion is used as a means of creating meditative space and features again in a film exploring the shapes and substance of water flowing down a pane of glass. Another film shows a blown egg revolving while lit from one side; the soft glint and glimmer of the egg’s shell being firstly spotlit and then erased as its revolution brings it into eclipse.

'The Great Drinking Bout' is film of a group of men carrying a large pitcher of drink into the woods and enacting bizarre rituals around their consumption of the pitcher’s fluid. As this surreal narrative unfolds however it develops into a meditation on trust with the group initially following their leader and then leading him as he places the now empty pitcher on his head at the film’s conclusion.

Gusmão and Paiva were Portugal’s representatives at the last Venice Biennale and are exhibiting here for the first time in the UK. Inspired by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa who wrote only in pseudonyms to present differing worldviews, they too revel in the creative energy engendered by contradictory philosophical ideas and express this energy through a humorous sense of wonder. Their sense of the profound comedy encountered through alternative perspectives is summed up in 'Astronomy of the End of the Boot' where a man observes the splendour of the sky through a hole in his shoe.

On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, ends 21 March 2010.

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