Dare tempo al tempo (Let Time Run Its Course)

Acquolina in bocca (‘Mouth-watering’); Il dolce far niente (‘Sweet Idleness’); Ammazzare il tempo (‘To Kill Time’); Dare tempo al tempo (‘Let Time Run Its Course’); Immaginando tutto (‘Imagining Everything); Il certo e l’incerto (‘The Certain and the Uncertain’). Each of these playful, suggestive phrases is spelt out in the present selection of Arazzi (tapestries) by Alighiero Boetti. The works, all 9 x 9” in size, have been held together as a group since shortly after their creation. Each presents a 4 x 4 square of block-capital letters in pleasing hues of pastel yellow, pink, lilac, aubergine, red, burgundy, green, orange and blue. Boetti’s Arazzi, among his most iconic and beloved works, came to embody his belief that the unity of the world comprised of a harmony of opposites based on the coexistence of order and disorder. Within the geometric square, words are fragmented into letters, creating a composite of organised chaos. At first glance the letters can be appreciated not for their semantic meaning within a word, but instead as autonomous shapes and forms, each with their own chromatic identity. Only when read from top to bottom, column by column, is the titular phrase revealed. Boetti’s mischievous games have a profoundly philosophical edge. By splitting the text into its constituent parts, he exposes language as a sophisticated but ultimately artificial and systematic arrangement of form. He commissioned groups of Afghan women to weave his tapestries, introducing a collaborative element that furthered his ideas of unity coming from plurality: the present selection were all executed between 1979 and 1983 in Kabul.