June 2001

Doug Aitkin;
François Morellet;
Georg Winter

Cor Dera

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Pietro Sanguineti

 

Pietro Sanguineti
(now), 2001
Duraclear in slide light-box,
195 x 240 x 20 cm, ed. 1/3

Pietro Sanguineti's (now) is the present in brackets - the hypertrophy of immediacy, exposed in the sheer size of the light-box, and at the same time relativized and taken back by the device of punctuation. The brackets around (now) are more that the relativization of sheer size; they delete the self-contradiction that is simultaneously given immanently and launched strategically.

(now) in brackets contains the very contradiction of the fiction of progress and factual standstill that has also been mentioned in terms of understanding Sanguineti's video loops. The brackets stand for an absent context and for a language system, for grammar and punctuation, for a syntax that is simultaneously relevant in terms of both form and content. As well as this, Pietro Sanguineti reflects the strategies of Pop Art and Conceptual Art in his use of language.

A work like (now) is always to be read as a critical reconfiguration of artistic positions like Joseph Kosuth's or Andy Warhol's as well. Both the endless movement of the "now" in the video and the absurd size of the word in the light-box stage an ironic self-negation of the concept. At the same time this refers, crucially, to the continuing process of valorization and devaluation in the production process, to which cultural production is subject as well.

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