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 works of art are intercorrelated historically, by tradition to the phenomenological experiences of value. Value is intended as constitutive element of the artwork in the same respect 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, in the flux of information and in the artistic context.
Works of art are produced, exchanged, and exhibited as objects of value, and also perceived, sensed as such. The necessity to question the impact of the value in the perception of a work of art is essential to critically think over the preconditions of art production. This evaluation seems to be a necessary step for contemporary art artist to simply remain relevant in front of artistic doxa, fluxus of data and economics. This challenge is indeed indicated as critical by authors like Anita Chari, Isabelle Graw, Christoph Menke, Sebastian Egenhofer and Peter Osborne and implied in Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno and Deleuze. The specificity of work of art as form of value is a complex one also because of the heterogeneous tradition associated with the term “art” and because some obscure features of commodities.
“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 invite to re-trace 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 fluctuates as indicated by Benjamin together with the value and the context. The value in this case was born in an animistic context, it went through an era of ritual and religious value and then changed, 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 force the repetition of a gesture that contain, “jellify” the work of the artist who touched, scretched, sandpapered the surface of the 3 canvas for 500 hours circa each. During the impossible task to verify the 2D flatteness of the canvas surface the ritual of the preparation of the canvas bifurcate.
Five ways to de-reificate an artwork is the result of an gathering activity started in 2021, a collection of fragments questioning the very possibility of an artwork the resist reification and commodification reducing it to a object with it s value suspended.
* pls refer to the text The merge of Time.