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拍品專文
‘The drawings in biro are concentrates of time... they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (A. Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti. Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 59).
Alghiero Boetti’s Svelare Rivelare is a dazzling sea of achromatic colour. Presented across two panels, each reaching over one metre high, dozens of undulating rows create a sense of movement, staccatoed by white commas. Created by the humble ball point pen, its distinctive surface texture was achieved through a painstaking and lengthy process in which two assistants – one male and one female – were employed by Boetti and instructed to cross-hatch lines. Upon this meticulously detailed surface, the letters of the alphabet run down the left hand side of the composition, offset by the seemingly random arrangement of floating commas, forming part of a highly ordered system, as the position of the comma and the corresponding letter of the alphabet spells of the title of the work from left to right. The self-reflexive title translates to ‘unveiling reveal’, suggesting not only the patience and concentration required to complete an artistic endeavour as monumental as this work, but also reflecting the conceptual mantra that applies to Boetti’s greater oeuvre, the principle he called ‘ordine e disordine’ (order and disorder). This principle underpins all of Boetti’s art from the late 1960s onwards - including the artist’s own twinned identity of himself as Alighiero e Boetti (Alighiero and Boetti).
Conceived by the artist as instructional pieces, Boetti stipulated that the biro works be executed by at least one man and one woman, to allow for a variation of individual style within the series. As the artist suggested, ‘All that is important is the rule. Anyone who does not know it, will never recognise the prevailing order in things, just as somebody who does not know the order of the stars will always see confusion where an astronomer has a very clear view of things’ (A. Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti. Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 311). The resultant picture is indicative of this playful, tautological exercise: its unique idiosyncrasies reflective of the interpretation of Boetti’s open ended instructions. In the present work, the variegated currents of red visually chart the passage of time, the subtle variations of colour corresponding to the multiple biro pens used over the expanses of paper before being laid onto canvas. ‘The drawings in biro are concentrates of time’, Boetti has stated, ‘they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (A. Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti. Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 59). This process is akin to the work of Roman Opalka, who similarly noted the passing of time by painting numbers across a canvas, relishing in the way each number looked different as a result of the amount paint left on his paintbrush.
Alghiero Boetti’s Svelare Rivelare is a dazzling sea of achromatic colour. Presented across two panels, each reaching over one metre high, dozens of undulating rows create a sense of movement, staccatoed by white commas. Created by the humble ball point pen, its distinctive surface texture was achieved through a painstaking and lengthy process in which two assistants – one male and one female – were employed by Boetti and instructed to cross-hatch lines. Upon this meticulously detailed surface, the letters of the alphabet run down the left hand side of the composition, offset by the seemingly random arrangement of floating commas, forming part of a highly ordered system, as the position of the comma and the corresponding letter of the alphabet spells of the title of the work from left to right. The self-reflexive title translates to ‘unveiling reveal’, suggesting not only the patience and concentration required to complete an artistic endeavour as monumental as this work, but also reflecting the conceptual mantra that applies to Boetti’s greater oeuvre, the principle he called ‘ordine e disordine’ (order and disorder). This principle underpins all of Boetti’s art from the late 1960s onwards - including the artist’s own twinned identity of himself as Alighiero e Boetti (Alighiero and Boetti).
Conceived by the artist as instructional pieces, Boetti stipulated that the biro works be executed by at least one man and one woman, to allow for a variation of individual style within the series. As the artist suggested, ‘All that is important is the rule. Anyone who does not know it, will never recognise the prevailing order in things, just as somebody who does not know the order of the stars will always see confusion where an astronomer has a very clear view of things’ (A. Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti. Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 311). The resultant picture is indicative of this playful, tautological exercise: its unique idiosyncrasies reflective of the interpretation of Boetti’s open ended instructions. In the present work, the variegated currents of red visually chart the passage of time, the subtle variations of colour corresponding to the multiple biro pens used over the expanses of paper before being laid onto canvas. ‘The drawings in biro are concentrates of time’, Boetti has stated, ‘they convey to me a physical impression of extended, immense time’ (A. Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti. Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, 1998, p. 59). This process is akin to the work of Roman Opalka, who similarly noted the passing of time by painting numbers across a canvas, relishing in the way each number looked different as a result of the amount paint left on his paintbrush.