LoviNYou

"Il n'y a pas d'amour. Il n'y a que des preuves d'amour."

This verse, by the french poet Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960), perfectly illustrates LoviNYou, a new major project by the Brazilian artist Marcos Saboya. This artwork is attached to a romantic concept where "affection projectiles" - love letters- are randomly launched, in the form of "paper planes", between two great metropolises, London and New York. In a playful effort to link these two cities through love statements Saboya translates the idea of reconnection with extreme lightness and efficiency, like a breath that carries this charge of love between two cities, both suffocated by the "busy and arid" day-by-day affairs. LoviNYou conveys an intense beauty: A "message in a bottle cast to the sea by a castaway". A "precog" already worthy for its action, yearning romantically toward the unity that would give us solace to our original split. Free Love ("if you don't love, act as if you did", said Kant) that tries to heal our narcissistic wound. Saboya's concept is of a jet stream of "incidental love" between these two cities that, although very different, are nevertheless similar in their multiplicity and apparent impersonality. LoviNYou aims to rescue the huge and diverse humanity crowding, with their subdued senses, in each park, corner, avenue, square or alley of London and New York. It thus restores our authentic meaning by bringing to the surface what is our most beautiful attitude, often hidden behind the rough fabric of days and obscure hours. In other words, LoviNYou is an attempt to re-humanize vast urban spaces through a sort of Love flight, without knowing where it will land but knowing that its dynamic is all that matters. At the same time a celebration and a spur, LoviNYou is, all in all, a giant declaration of love! Remembering Reverdy: "love exists only if it is manifested". And Saboya's manifest, in its poetry and tenderness, is extremely powerful in its pop aesthetic.