Hanging from the side of the gallery’s exterior wall is Over The Seas of Future Times, a selection of fragments from Pessoa’s text recomposed by the artist in a floating display. Left for the viewer to piece together, Pernot’s redaction mimics the very faculty of memory.

As the word ‘re-member’ suggests, to recall a memory is to repeatedly compose a collection of fragmented impressions we store in the mind, thus constructing and reconstructing a new memory in each moment, forever re-cast by the lens of the present, yet capable of eternal resurrection. As such, one way to ensure the perseverance of memory is to present it in fragments, so that it may be continuously reanimated by the viewer. 

Pessoa’s words are rendered in a mirrored surface, which reflect the passing clouds and changing light, as if to further amplify this intention of engagement, of a simultaneous permanence and transience.

The device of fragmentation, as it pertains to our experience of time and memory, is also at play in the four meter long sculpture Forever,– a ubiquitously employed word in the declaration of affections – which appears to be in a premature state of erosion. The crumbling, yet still legible letters, evoke the persistence of love against the ravages of time. They also bring to mind the 18th century architectural fad for ‘sham ruins’, which appealed to the romantics’ fascination with the past and one’s own mortality. 

In the center of the courtyard sits the titular sculpture of the installation: a stone basin filled with water, across which two heads – one floating above the meniscus and the other submerged at the basin’s bottom – stare at each other in perpetuity. Water here becomes a material metaphor for the past, as it is both tangible but not solid, rippling and warping what we may see within it, while reflecting our views of the present. 

The juxtaposition of the ancient materials of water and stone and the modern 3D printed resin heads are echoed by the subjects themselves: underwater lies a reputedly accurate likeness of Antinous, based on a bust currently held in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Facing him is the head of the artist’s companion, whose reflection further troubles our view of the distant Antinous. Suggestively positioning Pernot in the role of Hadrian, this arrangement conflates the immortalizing properties of love and art, while activating both as panaceas against the inexorable march of time.