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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF LILIANE AND MICHEL DURAND-DESSERT, PARIS

1934
DISSOLVENZA

measurements
37 by 26 by 20cm.

alternate measurements
14 1/2 by 10 1/4 by 7 7/8 in.

titled

iron, projector unit, time

Executed in 1970.

PROVENANCE

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Paris, ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Giovanni Anselmo, 1985, p. 44, illustrated
Luxembourg, Casino Luxembourg -- Forum d'art contemporain, Inviter, 1996
New York, Queens Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Miami, Miami Art Museum; Cambridge, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Global Conceptualism: Points of origin, 1950s-1980s, 1999-2001
Paris, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Le Diaphane & l'Obscur - Une histoire de la diapositive dans l'art contemporain, 2002, p. 93, illustrated in colour

LITERATURE

Exhibition Catalogue, Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, Giovanni Anselmo, 1980, pp. 80-81, illustrated
Germano Celant, The Knot: Arte Povera at P.S. 1, Turin 1985, p. 35, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Lyon, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Giovanni Anselmo, 1989, no. 47, illustrated
Germano Celant, Arte Povera, Villeurbane 1989, p. 51, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Munich, Kunstverein, Arte Povera 1971 und 20 Jahre danach, 1991, p. 14, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Santiago de Compostela, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Giovanni Anselmo, 1995, p. 193, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Nice, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Giovanni Anselmo, 1996, p. 189, illustrated
Carolyn Christo-Bakarjiev, Arte Povera, London 1999, p. 80, illustrated

NOTE

A slide projector projects the inscription "dissolvenza" (dissolution) on one of a steel cube's upright facets.

The sculptor wrests us away from the contemplation of the present in order to incite us to live according to a stretch of time that goes far beyond our ordinary level of consciousness: what, to our eyes, could possibly be more solid and enduring than a block of steel? It is nonetheless caught up in a permanent state of oxidation. Ultimately, in a distant future, it will corrode completely and disintegrate, thus returning to dust. Time will prove the projected word right. Once deprived of the support acting as the screen that renders it visible, this projection will, in turn, vanish into space...

Although excessive at first glance, this "metaphor" is nonetheless realist, even realizable. It allows us to touch upon the very heart of Giovanni Anselmo's thought; if, on the one hand, he enjoys revealing the perennial nature of physical laws, he likes to remind us, on the other, of the ephemeral character behind each of their manifestations. Furthermore, for the sculptor, time becomes a living substance just like space, and thus partakes in the exploration of the entire physical world. A sculpture which reacts to its environment can no longer be considered an object, and the range of external factors affecting it, much like its own range of action, goes well beyond the space it occupies physically. It is not the contradiction of an arbitrary image closed in on itself which determines the work, but the emotion each of us might feel as we travel to the limits of our imagination, there where contradictions are naturally resolved, in harmony with the conditions that presided over the genesis of the work.