SERSE. Reflections of water and semi-precious stones

Exhibition catalog SERSE. Reflections of water and semi-precious stones, E3 contemporary art, Brescia, 22 May – 29 July 2021.

The formal perfection of Xerxes' works seems at first sight to conceal the long and obsessive work that his practice requires: we are faced with images of surprising subtlety, mechanisms organized to the millimeter, like the crystals of the matter they are made of. Yet even the process that Xerxes puts in place is not alien to second thoughts, attempts, cancellations and accumulations. It is a question of gestures, albeit millimetric and accurate. The precision of the surface is the result of careful movements of the hands and eyes, who take up - and win - the challenge of representing matter in motion. The tautology he puts on stage when he composes diamonds, revealing the structure of the material he uses to design them, gives way to the fascination of the impossible in works dedicated to nature in motion. The water of Xerxes is always rippled, its skies are animated by passing clouds that filter the sun's rays, even its crystals result from the intertwining of geometric shapes of different texture and opacity. They are moments of nature, sudden moments that seem destined to disappear and change in an instant. Much of their charm lies precisely in the fact that Xerxes managed to harness time, staring at it forever without betraying its fluidity. The artist insisted on their appearance for days, staring at an image that paradoxically seems to escape our gaze. Movement and stasis coexist.

(from the text A matter of relationship by Costantino D'Orazio)