Much like a walk or a book that we flick through, in a narrative that builds with each passage, we walk through the different rooms that, like fragments, form the exhibition El Lenguage de las cosas mudas, by Susanne S.D. Themlitz (1968), on show at the Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (MARCO). Among sculptures in plaster, glass or ceramics; installations; paintings; drawings; writings and photographs, we delve into frozen moments, confront questions of scale and perspective, and reflect on notions of absence and presence in a body of work whose cross-disciplinarity is emphasised in the weight given to materials and techniques, without overlooking the relationship with the exhibition venue.

Upon entering the first room devoted to the exhibition, a welcoming sensation pervades us, emphasised by the installation Dentro. Suspended, 2024, which, blending in with the host architectural space, urges us towards it. This grandiose and poetic visual and sound installation, built with bamboo canes, endlessly stretches across the space – from floor to ceiling – occupying it like a landscape, allowing us to emerge into a performative and intimate experience through which we unveil interlocking layers within a rationale of both real and metaphorical interplays.

We physically walk around the installation, making it part of a contemplative and sensory experience. Textures, scents and sounds, all of which we pass through, crowd and fill the room in a fusion and dialogue between exterior and interior, an intimate relationship between the visitor, nature and time that goes well beyond contemporaneity. As a geometric, architectural puzzle of poise, the horizontal and vertical positioning of the bamboo canes provides a three-dimensional design in the space, which is also present – as a phantasmagoria – in the shadows cast along the walls, denoting the presence of an absence. Followed by a chime-like sound that hanging elements generate when they hit glass objects with the help of the wind, we look at the different elements that are part of the bamboo structure – including eucalyptus leaves from Galicia – and which, once hung, take us back to the idea of time in suspension. Using our body and senses, we traverse the installation, measuring ourselves and the space, becoming part of the landscape where, in the artist’s words, we can plunge into in memory terms, in physical terms and also be in suspension.

The viewer’s importance in Susanne Themlitz’s work, allowing them to trace a physical path and becoming part of the sculpture, as well as the direct appeal to the senses, follows us throughout the exhibition, in works whose careful observation and analysis require a slow, awake walk. Like objects that have been discovered on an archaeological expedition, we then see different objectual, artistic and hybrid artefacts whose intimacy, provided by the staging concept, enhances a studying and archiving ambience. On tables – from the museum’s collection – that span almost the entire length of the room, the installation Transformatório (Laboratório de desenho), 1986-2024, unveils a cabinet of curiosities, items and materials that, having been collected and manipulated by the artist over the course of more than thirty years, form her personal archive.

Corals, stones, fossils, found and altered ceramics; plaster and clay mouldings; empty shells; devices for creating images (magnifying glasses, mirrors, crystals, spherical, conical or convex glass objects); postcards from Vigo; moss, and other elements, all surface in a macro and microscopic universe that invites the perspective and the experience of time. The works on the landscape tables resemble coral and were designed in liquid plaster by the artist, who placed them in sand to solidify at a certain moment – giving rise to shapes and designs beyond her control -, which Themlitz calls freezing, a reflection on the before and after that we associate with the notion of suspension in the first installation. The presence of magnifying glasses is used to analyse the interior of the small works, providing different ways of looking at things and unveiling hidden worlds, just like the crystals that allow images to be inverted, exploring perspectives, scales and measurements that are of great interest to the artist. Presence and absence are also examined in the installation through cut-outs on A4 paper, as well as the transformative nature of the drawing laboratory itself which, in keeping with its name, is constantly changing and growing by adding pieces made by children and adults in the Museum’s educational service studios. These feelings of impermanence, transformation and transmutation spill over into the pictorial works that dot the space, displaying fragments of landscapes, line and paint – which at some point become solid.

Fluctuating between past and present, between the intersection of different moments and times that lead us to ongoing processes of unveiling and discovery, the large diptych Reflexo do Lugar ao Lado, 2021, shows configurations of a landscape inspired by the botanical gardens of Palácio da Cerca in Almada. As if travelling to a place, Themlitz shows us instances of the garden that she has reimagined and reinterpreted in a reflection that brings together different elements. Frozen, suspended moments and memories that become materialised in patches of colour, lines and ghostly images that bring to mind water, clouds, the sky, trees and wind mirrored on the surface. Two small terracotta pieces are displayed on a pre-existing elevated structure in an interesting dialogue with the painting, using the architectural configuration of the space to encourage a horizontal interpretation and view of it.

We then continue our journey through the artist’s universe and landscapes to a room that, flooded with natural light, is populated by exceptional creatures and presences – sculptural pieces steeped in human, zoomorphic and ghostly reminiscences -, in dialogue with two paintings Ma (2022) and Ponto de Vista. Silêncio. Escuro (2017). These are hybrid, anthropomorphic beings that come to life in small sculptures and other natural-sized ones (close to the viewer’s scale) whose bodies, made of various materials, are covered in clothes. We move between the real, the imagination and the symbolic, as our bodies relate to sculptures of different scales which, by reverberating a dream-like and magical dimension, take us – in a moment of time suspension – to the realm of mythology, sci-fi and childhood stories.

The next room, the installation O silêncio ao lado (Entre seres e paisagens), 2000-2024, is set in a study and work area, where tables have been carefully arranged to hold an artistic, documentary and photographic collection. The artist’s fascination with the history of the objects she collects, occasionally systematising them in a poetic form and sometimes bringing them into contact with other objects, is evident in the different elements of the installation – sculptures, stones, ceramics, drawings, collages and photographs -, as well as in the displays and cabinets salvaged from the museum’s warehouses. Between sculptures of fantasy and genderless beings – between human and animal – gestures, silence and the notion of presence/absence are further examined in the collages, photo cut-outs and verses, and in the symbolism of the snail shells.

Themlitz’s artistic practice, for whom text, object and image have the same importance, can be seen in works in which these elements establish different narratives, creating mental landscapes. In this regard, we would like to point out A palavra debajo de la lengua, 2023, in which words and images become intertwined in a landscape painting, in a space open to our interpretation.

In the last room of the exhibition, the presence of writing as silence, the direct nature of the word and the possibility of creating layers in the visual field of the paintings follow us. Much like plaster and ceramics that become solid, originating colours and shapes in a moment of freezing, we see three canvases whose stains, resulting from the process of pouring liquid paint and decalcomania, generate – in an appeal to chance – landscape hints to which the artist adds, as a taunt, stencilled phrases.

The exhibition concludes with a kind of atlas, La pared de ámbar, 2023-2024, in which printed posters featuring the artist’s drawings and photographs of places have been digitally converted into collages and enlarged to create a huge mural. Almost like wallpaper that stretches to the ceiling, the work demands our time and attention, engaging us in a game of exploration dictated by the rhythm and flow of the images which, between patches and explosions of colour, shadows and textures, unveil the different landscapes that inspire Susanne Themlitz.

The exhibition is on view until April 13.