by Luca Cerizza, 2007

In the guise of machines for seeing, Sancho Silva’s works question the way we look at the world, suggesting how sight and the body are defined and regulated by social laws and devices, by habits and limitations. His installations are presented for the most part as forms that are minimalist in appearance, with somewhat retro, even old-fashioned appeal, but with a completely contemporary agenda. While they descend from an extremely long speculative tradition regarding optics and visual perception, they tell us about the ambiguous and continuously negotiated boundaries – between sight and power, public and private space, inclusion and exclusion, control and exhibitionism – that characterize our daily lives. Silva’s machines entail mostly individual and highly subjective processes; they are often isolated in rooms, and we too are alone as we experience a glance that can be altered, selective, and new. We are invited to observe, spy, re-define a portion of the world in renewed fashion. Silva looks at languages such as painting and cinema when he defines canvases, frames, and sequences of images, or when he frames views to reveal new relationships between man and the surrounding landscape. These spaces bring to mind peep-shows, ancient military apparatuses, or sighting tools; they are positions from which one can exercise one’s curiosity and a voyeuristic pleasure about a situation, a landscape, or other individuals. In Silva’s works, the act of looking is always tied to a position of power, but one that is deconstructed and called into question.

During this time of total exposure, Silva’s works are devices that help us to look at the world more carefully, encouraging a more conscious and active glance.

This text was firts printed in the catalogue of the exhibition Où? Scènes du Sud : Espagne, Italie, Portugal, Carré d'Art - Musée d'Art Contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France, 2007.