Untitled

2009

Analog BW prints from 35mm negative

Limited Edition of 3 (unframed - 1 sold)

With this work I am concerned with the vanishing of the Real, with the process of disappearance of the Reality as theorised by Jean Baudrillard in, among others of his publications, Why Hasnʼt Everything Already Disappeared?. I believe this process finds its birth in the desire of the human beings to know, to fill the blank, to fulfill their potential, to list and categorise the Real. The desire of a total knowledge goes much quicker than the opportunity to make human experiences, or, as Lévy concludes ʻthe pace of cultural evolution exceeds that of biological evolutionʼ. I believe that in mature forms of society (and I intend the word mature in its economic sense) people are loosing the desire tomake physical experiences, so there is virtually no need to produce anything anymore because there is no need to experience anything anymore. And everything disappears. ʻArt itself in the modern period exists only on the basis of its disappearanceʼ says Baudrillard. Finally the image too becomes superfluous.

The project is composed by two series: The Physical Impossibility of Memory in the Mind of Someone Living (the Present) and The Physical Impossibility of Memory in the Mind of Someone Living (the Future).

The Present, includes 30 black and white re-photographs of posters and screens which literally cover the city of New York and which depict New York itself. I was there in November 2009 when I noticed the phenomenon: the city covered with its own images as the latest were more important then the former in its flesh.

The Future is composed by 7 images of very familiar and vastly reproduced works of art accompanied by their titles. They are miniatures that I created in scale to fit an imaginary art gallery. I want to drive the attention of the audience on the consequences of the creation of a type of memory based on virtual experiences and not physical ones. My photographs are memory images but it is a memory based on a disappeared Reality, on a lack of physical experiences, so it is white, partial, sterile and cold.

 Untitled is part of The Physical Impossibility of Memory in the Mind of Someone Living (the Present).