Theo Guicheron-Lopez 

If it was only three points                          Curated by Patrycja Plich

Galerie Paul Scherzer 

15 July – 28 July 2024

Space-time continuum appears when we need to place events in exact moment, in defined territory.
You can be only in one place at time, but simultaneously you can carry several places in you. Those
spatial memories can relate to each other, and reflect in relation, they may affect themselves, can
battle between each other, have a willingness to unite or be lost in each other’s memory. We’re
looking for this desired place into other places, wherever we are simultaneously we start to virtually
rebuild them, in our internal environment, on now-and-here ground. Places can reflect on each other
only if we immerse deeply in them and if we bring pieces of them back, from one to another. Theo
Guicheron-Lopez re-invents the topography of places with which he has personal relation. This
sculptural proces is both intimate and universal. It is a material research that draw its path from the
very beginning of civilisations and first city-like forms to the contemporary infrastructure of everyday
life. Theo Guicheron-Lopez immerses into spaces and he rebuilds signs attached to them, their
unique features whose appears like sets of material and virtual circumstances rather than scraps of
reality. All that is constituted by topographical meanings and artist’s own sculptural code. The
gothic motive typically attached to the regional architectural style can relate to the historical
trajectory of sculptural choices made centuries ago, which in its source were forgotten, or the
dominant structures of visual powers decided to erase its origin.

The one of the first ever known maps made by human is a piece of stone prepared to carry and to
navigate by touch alongside the road. Its sculpted side relates to the form of the edge of the
seacoast*. The navigation was based on a process of touching and following the line of grooves on
the stone model of the coastal territory during the road into the final point. The crucial was to keep
following the line and its key points, while following the edges of the grounded territory, and which
visual indicators were giving the hope of going the right direction. The object itself had a strong
relation to drawing, the line was an indicator and a moving hand – a navigator. We can find this
relation of spatiality and drawing process in Theo’s sculptural practice. In his works we can observe
lines following volatile shapes, traversing paths from starting point to its destination, from here to
there, from now to another times. On those lines his spatial signs are attached as displaced moments
of here-and-now.

Another historical maps were created to navigate not on the ground but between grounds – on the
sea. They were used by navigators travelling between Marshall Islands Archipelago**. Wooden
sticks were defining the watery distances between, while little shells were designates positions of
islands. Experiencing the art of Theo Guicheron-Lopez we pass through those types of maps,
where each detail is a type of refugium or an island, where is possible to stop by or rest longer. It is
this secret power of his works. It’n not necessary to see everything to experience the whole. Each
detail brings the essence of here-and-now moment, discreetness of forms doesn’t hurry the viewer
up. The relation between matter and map is the one in the center of Theo’s interest. Key point is a
symbol that states the position of the object or real-world feature on the map surface. On nowadays
maps we can be omnipresent users, while individual experience is limited to well-described
topographies created and dominated by powerful elites. According to the post-representational
cartography map is never fully finished. Seeing the world as a whole can be both liberating and
depriving.

In recent period Theo’s method is affected by the transformation. Bitumen forms used by Theo at
the beginning of his practice were far more grained, needed more hard tooling. It was the type of
work related closely to the stone carving. Those object were visually heavier, bitumen forms were
occupying attention and disorientating the space. Current bitumen elements are discrete points,
waved into the tissue of sculptured model, to which possibility of arriving leads the viewer by
deliberately navigated signs. They’re key points on the map rather than territory itself. Besides that
carving in bitumen is a practice endangering the health. Petroleum-based substance forced artist to
re-think the strategy as impact on health and surroundings in this type of work is not easy to

minimalize. The global system of dependencies starting with colonisation makes us accustomed to
the anonymity of the matter. In a globalised world matter looses its origin. Locality can be create by
multilayered features coming from afar. Those extracted parts of our reality used by Theo (wood,
stone, bitumen) rediscover their origin by the process of placing them on his cartographical
structures. The omnipresence of materials led us to the limited sensibility of truly sensed matter
while in Theo’s artistic activity they reinvent its sensual potential.

Theo Guicheron-Lopez in the strategy of reproduction, displacement and re-definition of
architectural elements connected with natural materials like stone, wood and self-collected bitumen
pieces is creating the research space for future discovering. Sculptures presented in this exhibition
have double character. They are finished artistic forms but as well an atlas of visual codes anchored
in spatial side of our existence which is the main theme the artistic long-lasting research. This
artistic expression find its occurrence thanks to his sensibility of the matter, which we can relate to
Catherine Malabou’s concept of substantial plasticity***. His consciousness of a sculptural process
includes both the sense of bringing things to life-forms and its destructive aspect – irreversibility and
disappearance.

Text by Patrycja Plich

* Benjamin J, O’Leary M, McDonald J, Wiseman C, McCarthy J, et al. Aboriginal artefacts on the continental shelf reveal ancient
drowned cultural landscapes in northwest Australia. PLOS ONE 15(7) [2022].
** Genz, Joseph H., Breaking the shell: voyaging from nuclear refugees to people of the sea in the Marshall Islands. Honolulu:
University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2018].
*** Malabou, C.. Ontologie de l’accident: Essai sur la plasticité destructrice. Editions Léo Scheer. Paris [2009].

Theo Guicheron-Lopez (b. 1991, Paris, France) lives and works between Paris and Halle (Saale) (De).  If it was only three points is his first solo exhibition in a German gallery. It is part of a series of several exhibitions, the next ones will take place in Munich and Warsaw in 2024.