CHAPTER I:
HOW THE VALUE APPEARS
2020-2023.
The series How the value appears gather four kind of value expressed in an artwork.
Value defines artworks because they are intercorrelated historically, by tradition, and through phenomenological experiences of value. Value is intended as a constitutive element of the artwork, just as much as its materiality or the concept that generates it. In this sense, value is also sensible, perceptible, and expresses the immersion of the work in the economic flow, flux of information, and artistic context.
Works of art are produced, exchanged, and exhibited as objects of value, and are also perceived and sensed as such. The necessity to question the impact of value on the perception of a work of art is essential to critically think over the preconditions of art production. This evaluation is a necessary step for contemporary art artists to remain relevant in the face of artistic doxa, fluxus of data, and economics. This challenge is indeed indicated as critical by authors such as Anita Chari, Isabelle Graw, Christoph Menke, Sebastian Egenhofer, Peter Osborne, and implied in Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno, and Deleuze. The specificity of the work of art as a form of value is complex, also because of the heterogeneous tradition associated with the term “art” and because of some obscure features of commodities.
“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. »
“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable.”*
The journey of the aura of the black stone of Cyprus indicates and invites us to retrace simply the fluctuation of the Aura (understood in the Benjaminian sense) of a found stone. It traces the adventure of a found object that has become one of the most precious objects of the ancient world, inestimable by definition. The aura of the black stone of Cyprus has changed and fluctuated as indicated by Benjamin, along with its value and context. The value in this case was born in an animistic context, went through an era of ritual and religious value, then disappeared and reappeared regenerated by an archaeological rediscovery in a completely new context; today this journey is enriched by the contemporary art one.
Atlas Rug explores a classic aspect of value creation through a production protocol that obliges the traditional concepts of use value and exchange value to remain unavoidably visible and separate in the perception of the carpet itself. Paradoxically, this mechanism has created an object that reproduces the dynamics of exploitation that it denounces and represents at the same time.
Before Painting (500 hours) describes a more classical process: a procedure forces the repetition of a gesture that contains and “jellifies” the work of the artist who touched, scratched, and sandpapered the surface of the three canvases for approximately 500 hours each. During the impossible task to verify the 2D flatness of the canvas surface, the ritual of the preparation of the canvas bifurcates.
Five ways to de-reificate an artwork is the result of a gathering activity started in 2021, a collection of fragments questioning the very possibility of an artwork that resists reification and commodification, reducing it to an object with its value suspended.
Please refer to the text “The Merge of Time” for more information.
* pls refer to the text The merge of Time.