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Artist: Liliana Moro

Curated by Stella Bottai

To tell the story of Liliana Moro’s first exhibition with Rodeo, I began with a digression – an ekphrasis of some sort tracing the artist’s free, self-ironic and individualistic mindset in which this new show is rooted. An expanded version of this text is published on Rodeo’s website, whilst below are some essential considerations on the new show.

In No Time expands on the conceptual premise of the underdog, an important subject in Moro’s wider practice. The human figure rarely features in Moro’s work in explicit ways, as the artist likes to turn to figurative metaphors, very often devices and animals, to comment upon her time and hold up a mirror to society. At Rodeo, a flock of sheep are traced in pencil, faithful to natural scale, over white paper collaged on equally-sized white boards. The reduced palette of these works, titled XXX, 2024, is as succinct as the overall atmosphere of the room. Minimal on the surface, maximalist at the core, Moro is known for her ability to include only what is strictly necessary. One may call it rigour, or concentration. The sheep turn their heads and engage the viewer, who can picture a direct stare even though the eyes are missing. These are no mythical, breathing beings in the way Jannis Kounellis deployed living horses in Untitled (12 Horses) (1969). Moro’s sheep exist in direct semantic relationship with reality through their declared fictional presence – with a nod to the artist’s early days in theatre and her continued interest in its vocabulary of mimesis.

Alike a chorus of nobodies, the ovine crowd stands alongside one exception – a black neon sheep. Here is Moro’s underdog, the exceptional character which, in the artist’s cosmos, speaks not only of personal choices and breaking the rules, but also of the paradoxes and ambiguities attached to this popular set phrase. Making an aside – the etymology of “pecuniary” comes from the Latin pecunia, which means “money” and is in turn rooted in the word for herd and cattle, which at the time were sources of wealth. In its social history, the sheep is deeply entangled with the most universal systems of value and belief, that is money.

Beliefs form groups. It is impossible to know for sure who, or what, Moro’s black sheep may be, which gathering she may or may not belong to – by choice or unwillingly. The paradox gauged by the artist is that of a moment in time where it has become more complex than ever to talk about majorities and outsiders; forces of oppression that seemed limited to the fringes of political life gain increased momentum in Western nations, whilst democracies are in crisis-mode. “Who is in is in, who is out is out” – of what?

Moro is deeply connected to the existential depth of the human experience, and as such is interested in nature as a witness of loss and transience. A soft, floor-based work in traffic yellow intimately envelops the sound of an intermittent water drop. Its tempo is irregular and not hectic, it could be the aftermath of, or an announcement for, imminent flooding. Titled like the exhibition, In No Time, this small work evokes the presence of water without dictating its terms, creating an image of either scarcity or excess. Sound is, indeed, a crucial medium for Moro who, between the late 80’s and today, has produced some forty-five acoustic pieces. Even when not literally performed, a sonic dimension is often implied in her pieces through the use of materials and visual constructions that either hinge upon the absence of noise or that rely on the viewer imagination to activate it. In No Time contemplates repetition – physical, visual, and even emotional – as a mechanism of growth or reduction, understood ultimately as transformation.

Moro’s incessant drops of water paint the sonic landscape of a wait reminiscent of the philosophical concept of “enduring time” formulated by Lisa Baraitser: a time which, in the face of today’s challenges across climate change, unending violent conflict and widening social inequalities, is no longer flowing but has become “stuck, intensely felt, yet radically suspended”.

Text by Stella Bottai