REMAINS (2002)

Room’s corner: oranges cut on halfs, dried and nailed on the wall — some of them concavely, some convexly turned halfs. Tightly compressed to one another or inserted into each other. Some of the oranges half-cuts contain dense, greenish mildew, some became brown and darkened because they were not dried enough or dried in a proper way. Some of them got the lace structure because the moths were biting them. They were all used for squeezing juice. Just few steps away from dried oranges, there is the worn kitchen table, the juice squeezer, the cutting board, the knife and pile of nails. Somewhere nearby is somebody who's been drinking the juice. Oranges were a part of daily breakfast. Dealing with these nutritional leftovers has given him the feeling of creating something out of nothing. The skin of oranges reminds him of human skin, especially when it's dry — its pores. Oranges tissue and fibers — what's left inside after squeezing and drying — remind him of a tissue of humans and animals. Convex/concave halfs remind him of Plato; on the myth about the loss of man's integrity and of a search for its unique half of orange, the search all over the world to regain the integrity of himself. Unremittingly he cut, squeezed, dried and hammered. He managed to gather for about five hundred halfs, which were the remains of breakfasts, collected over a period of three years. There are bigger and smaller halfs, there are those intensively orange in colour and there are those anemic-pale ones. There were succulent oranges, while some were hardly squeezed, given hardly any juice. There were sweet ones and acidic ones, tasteful ones and the ones with no taste whatsoever. Drying is regular; Every day the skin distorts, retracts itself, decreases. It hardens pretty fast, pores become more pronounced, deeper, more resistant. The tissue gets thinner, paler. It is important not to give up. With good conditions, drying progresses finely, a little bit of amount goes to a complete waste. The most beautiful ones are those that have been drying well.

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