ARCOmadrid | Adrien Missika: Vigiles du vivant

Vigiles du vivant is a series of rectangular slabs of pure beeswax, functioning as candle paintings in slow motion. Emerging from a ritualistic and mystical lineage, the pieces are not complete until they are lit. During the exhibition, each work is activated through multiple wicks, turning the gallery into a site of transformation.

As the wax liquefies, the surface becomes a shifting skin: it sweats, bleeds, and reconfigures itself. The work “paints itself” through gravity and heat, while the flame occasionally licks the wall, leaving a blackened mark, a fossil of light, a bruise on the architecture.

The project confronts the climate crisis through a fragile economy of matter. Beeswax is produced by honeybees, a species increasingly at risk. Burning the works becomes both a gesture of mourning and a form of testimony: a disappearing world melting before our eyes. Yet within that loss, new forms keep emerging, suggesting that even collapse carries its own unsettling kind of renewal.

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