14 June 2016
Here we are, finally sticking to the rhythm of our own heartbeats while following with a safe scep- ticism the data of the atomic watch; here we are again, painting on the walls, scrolling down the news, smashing the triangular highways when we are lucky enough; lucky enough to leave what we believe in order to live what we are, dreaming for eye drops, ordering drinks on the rocks, sen- ding compositions of emojis, touching the plastic plants when the chihuahuas are looking for thehandbags they call home, streaming the past and one more time filled forever by preuves d’amourwhen bombs blasts by surprise the sleeping beauties under the clouds of the roofs of smoke, let confound happiness and lifestyles to pass the metal detector, lets take pictures when facing Nature, lets forget that even the violins need ivory to get a better sound during our jet lag. A few years ago in Geneva, I had the chance to host a Tibetan tantric monk during twenty-four hours. He was on his way to the Kingdom of Bhutan and needed to buy a tent and a sleeping bag beforehis next flight... It was not the camping season in Switzerland and the tent became immediately ano-go issue. We went to all the trekking shops and alpinism department stores of the town. The Tibetan monk’s name was of course
Tenzin, he was dressed with the traditional fiery-orange robe (quite similar to the Hermès orangeor is it Harley Davidon’s light pastel red?), could I asked for anything more? Well, he was fasci- nated by tall girls with big boobs, did I say tantrism?... Anyways, Tenzin opened up all the slee- ping bags he saw and as a good citizen I tried as fast as I could to reinsert the slippery polyester cocoons into their pockets right after him. We had fun, we tried the brand new skateboards in the empty corridors of the sport sections and I coached him to ask whatever questions to every ready-toblush employee with long legs un-ready to speak English with the lookalike reincarnation of the Buddha according to Martin Scorcese’s casting requirements. The search became a quest, we went to the suburbs. Tenzin tested all the models, we became experts in techy logos as tech-nicality seems to be the aim of of a good nap in extreme conditions... After, lets say... five hours,Tenzin asked me why did I refolded everything all the time as there where people paid to do that and right away turned enchanted by a model of this kind of zippable hooded duvet, a bit to long for him but orange and exclaimed: I like this one! At this precise moment, I was still negotiating with myself on the Chaos (creates jobs) versus Harmony (eduction of my parents) new point of rupture when I replied: Do you mean it’s orange? On the way back home, totally delighted by the shopping session, Tenzin gave me a black seed and told me that they were an exclusivity of the monks, that I should chew it slowly... I went high during more than tree days, I’m usually happy as if I was trapped in a non-stop X-Mas party but with this thing (yeah, if I had knew I wouldn’t plant it in me but in the most fertile ground ever), I understood the source of the compassionate smile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. To go back where we started, is it night or day, is it ying or yang, is it real or not? Hum, it seems that Henri Matisse was right, the artists should not talk about their works. SORRY.
J.V.
Jo Vargas (*1975) lives and works between Paris & Geneva. He is a Colombian, Swiss and Hon-durian artist coming from the advertising industry. In the contemporary art field, he worked interalia as assistant of Sylvie Fleury from 2004 until 2014. His personal works are open to interpreta- tion in order to set freedom as a visible area over the collective unconsciousness fantasies of it. He signed several of his pieces under the name Raja Govguesev
With: Jo Vargas