Amparo Viau: Un secreto se apaga entre mis manos

ArtNoble Gallery presents “Un secreto se apaga entre mis manos” (“A secret is revealed in my hands”), a solo exhibition by Amparo Viau (Adrogué, Argentina, 1991), with a critical text by Benedetta Casini.

For her first European presentation, Viau conceives a large-scale installation: an immersive path in which a single drawing, thirty-five metres long and made with chalk pastels on paper, unfolds through the space, transforming drawing into a physical, visual, and temporal experience. The image becomes an environment, a passage, and a gesture.

At the centre of Viau’s research lies the human figure. Intertwined bodies, overlapping scenes, and narrative fragments construct a layered visual texture in dialogue with performative languages such as contemporary dance, theatre, and cinema. The images appear as suspended choreographies or theatrical still frames. Each body contains a gesture, tension, and rhythm, while each group suggests a story unfolding within another.

The installation unfolds in three moments—beginning, transition, and expansion—tracing a cyclical movement. A dense zone of intertwined bodies gives way to an unstable threshold and then expands, as colour and space dilate and breathe. The narrative remains in continuous reactivation, suggesting a circular sense of time.

Chalk, fragile and powdery, reinforces the performative dimension, preserving the gesture’s intensity while revealing its vulnerability and ephemeral nature.

“Un secreto se apaga entre mis manos” becomes a space of passage where drawing is a stage and time manifests as cycle, transformation, and return, inviting an immersive experience where gesture, space, and narrative intertwine.