Solo Exhibition at Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Miami, USA
…the two
February 15th, 2020 - April 25th, 2021
Open to public
Since the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are not always complete from the start, you have to turn to patience in order to assume that “There is a time for everything”; and it is then that we have to wait until time matures both the circumstances and the person who intends to put the pieces together.
That process took ten years to culminate in the production and exhibition of an object which, had it been intervened at the time of its “appropriation,” would have become a nonsensical version of its intrinsic nature.
The piece in question is the box of five engravings, a limited edition by Sandro Chia and 5 poems by Michael Palmer; it was supposed to remain whole, with its engravings and all the supplementary material as one unit. The fate of the five engravings remains unknown, but it is clear what would have become of the box and its contents had not the artist acted and rescued it at the precise moment.
Ten years later, the time came when the pieces fit together.
“XXI / XX” is the title of this piece – which is composed of eleven elements, intervened by the artist in both their appearance and in their meaning. Regarding the words: some have been moved, others turned over or turned around, and still others silenced; but those that remain acquired a new meaning, a new discourse; they have become a new “poem.”
The idea to develop this intervention came out of the practice of executing another series, that of the “Haikus,” where, by taking the unchanged names of the color chart of the Benjamin Moore paint company, a series of poems was “built” in the spirit of that Japanese tradition.
One thing leads to another, it could be said.
Both series constitute the parentheses for a period of time - impossible to calculate
a priori - where perhaps, the silence made the work more arduous.