Toute pensée émet un coup des dés
With works from the Chelsea Special Collection
06.11.2017 to 09.11.2017
Chelsea College of Arts, London
Curated by Laura Callegaro, Jasmine Kee, Raffaella Matrone
If there has been an increasing concern to have control over the finished book, artists too have seen that the relation between artist and reader need not to cast the latter as a passive receiver.
Stephen Bury, Artists' Books: The Book as a Work of Art
The brutal gesture of suppressing the voice of the poet, in this case Stéphane Mallarmé, is emphasised in Marcel Broodthaers’ 1969 rendition of ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’, in his covering of the text with black stripes. When changes like this happen, fear and unacceptance of something seen as different from the status quo also occur. Therefore, most of the time, changes are simply censored.
This exhibition’s aim is to investigate how creative minds dealt with this issue, and how the debate has since taken shape in the form of recent artistic practice, specifically through artist books. The connected progression of Maranda, Pichler and Evans has been created throughout decades; referring to Broodthaers’ Livre d’artiste, it triggers a number of inputs from the viewer, inviting them to explore its genesis.
The first relation exists between Mallarmé and Broodthaers’ books, established consciously by the latter. In constituting it, Broodthaers not only queries the visual, aesthetic and typographical radical aspects, but questions its historical implications as well.
The second relation is created through the display of three more recent artist’s books and the empty folder, in which Broodthaers’ book is usually stored. In fact, as a natural ramification of censorship, this exhibition considers, additionally, the concept of copyright, tackled under many relevant aspects: from the impossibility of documenting these objects, to the action taken by the artists in visually and creatively censoring previous artworks.
Broodthaers exists as the conjunction between the exhibited objects, whilst also acting as the missing link. Since his work is not shown, it is not accessible and is therefore, somehow, censored. However, the artwork’s aura and connotations are displayed through a fetish element which refers to its present stage: the current container of Broodthaers’ book in Chelsea’s Special Collections.
A sort of palimpsest is identified with this exhibition as a whole, in which artists develop a rhizomatic and horizontal relationship, rather than a hierarchical and vertical one. Finally, by breaking the control of freedom of expression typical of censorship, each artist shapes, metaphorically speaking, an oxymoron in an object: a book.
Special thanks to:
Gustavo Grandal Montero and the Chelsea Special Collection
Donald Smith
Image credits: Laura Callegaro and Raffaella Matrone
