Offering a post-atomic desolate landscape of putrescent scum, the stalagmites topped with polished cast aluminium mirrors - in which visitors are reflected - recall geological time and the artist's descents to the depths of natural caves in the Cévennes. Also inspired by the (over)natural concretions of the Danakil desert in Ethiopia - where he dreams of going one day -, Pernisco brings to life strange effusions of yellow sulphate and white salt. A mixture of admiration and fear that can engender a sense of the sublime, this imprudent journey to the edge of mountains and wonders speaks again and again of "exhaustion, erosion, putrefaction, decay and iconoclasm". Men go off to admire the mountain tops," remarked Petrarch, "but they neglect to examine themselves. In his encounters of the third kind within the spaces of mineral sleep, Nelson Pernisco reconciles expedition beyond reality and introspection in the heart of oneself.



Extract from the article by Emmanuel Daydé published in the numéro 100 de la revue Art Absolument, published on 18 March 2022