For December, which then became the end of December, I was asked to write a text about the new piece by Reinhard Schmid for $Whale.

I found myself pushing it and pushing it with no explanation, I love the artist, and I love the piece.

Endings are a strange thing. It is bizarre because they usually correspond to an artificial time that we, ourselves, created. Like the 31st of December, the calendar, the end of the year, and so on. But accepting to live within a group of people who share specific rules and habits and that we call society, somehow I always find myself being part of that shared condition for which when one year ends – still according to the solar calendar – specific feelings and thoughts come to mind (as proof of empathy, I was living in China, with the lunar calendar, and was sharing the same condition with the Chinese community).

This year, as you might or might not have seen from the curation that I have done for $Whale “THE STORY OF A REBIRTH,” I was feeling a sense of worry and emptiness, I guess like many of us, coming from two tough years of isolation and violation of freedom.

When 2022 started, I suddenly thought about Aurélie and realized: how could I have written about something so pure and delicate, so hopeful, in the last days of this past year?

I love music boxes; if I only had the perseverance, I would be their most incredible collector. They are precious and melancholy; they remind me that I am no one without my past and that I shouldn’t avoid feeling it in the present. I find for Reinhard’s female figures to exist in this dichotomy of being trapped to the mechanics, the engines, the concrete, while at the same time somehow keeping that ease, that elegance that makes you float towards the future.

Aurélie is honest; she is not ornamenting; she is not false hope. She is genuine, authentic.

Aurélie is the truth that we need to face this new year, a beautiful golden truth that doesn’t forget where we come from while pushing us to dance in the air.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

Happy New Year with Aurélie.

Eleonora Brizi