Modern Times - Memory Break, 2012 - ongoing
Modern Times - Memory Break is an ongoing series started in 2011 concerned with the state of information in today's world, its distribution channels and its uses. Constantly bombarded by visual and textual data, and always and anywhere reachable thanks to the latest communication technologies, it is becoming complicated to discern what is relevant and what is not, and to be able to see the big picture within this mass of fragmented and specialised information. Nonetheless these are the constituents of our and future generations’ memory.
All of the pieces are compositions of images and texts already available, as in the Untitled Letters, or distorted, as in the I Thought About That When It Was Too Late. In particular the texts are spam emails, symbols of the flux of unwanted information that like a constant drop changes our perspectives, beliefs and habits. In the Untitled sub-series the emails are reproduced in their totality and the pieces are grouped up in categories that mime a common household management (i.e. letters, bank/money/credit cards, shopping, accidents compensations, etc.). The images that accompany the texts are screen shots taken when the computer, as the mind, crashes and mixes up data. A thin line encloses text and image providing a fixed, claustrophobic structure that leaves no escape.
The recently added I Thought About That When It Was Too Late sub-series consists of L-shaped pieces where spam emails’ subjects are used as lines of poems concerned with the credit crunch and other issues of our times. The images are distorted masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa or 99 Cents by Gursky, whose original file is one of the thousands that can be downloaded from the internet. Within the unusual frame, text and image are placed with a higher degree of freedom but the L shape resists any comfortable reading of the piece in its totality.
Ultimately the series questions about the postmodern condition in art as in life of regurgitating data, and our residual ability of discerning their importance.
All of the pieces are compositions of images and texts already available, as in the Untitled Letters, or distorted, as in the I Thought About That When It Was Too Late. In particular the texts are spam emails, symbols of the flux of unwanted information that like a constant drop changes our perspectives, beliefs and habits. In the Untitled sub-series the emails are reproduced in their totality and the pieces are grouped up in categories that mime a common household management (i.e. letters, bank/money/credit cards, shopping, accidents compensations, etc.). The images that accompany the texts are screen shots taken when the computer, as the mind, crashes and mixes up data. A thin line encloses text and image providing a fixed, claustrophobic structure that leaves no escape.
The recently added I Thought About That When It Was Too Late sub-series consists of L-shaped pieces where spam emails’ subjects are used as lines of poems concerned with the credit crunch and other issues of our times. The images are distorted masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa or 99 Cents by Gursky, whose original file is one of the thousands that can be downloaded from the internet. Within the unusual frame, text and image are placed with a higher degree of freedom but the L shape resists any comfortable reading of the piece in its totality.
Ultimately the series questions about the postmodern condition in art as in life of regurgitating data, and our residual ability of discerning their importance.
