La materia dell’ornamento

Conceived on the occasion of the international project Artisti per Sarajevo, an initiative in support of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, the work is installed on the main façade of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia.
Joseph Kosuth, father of conceptual art, extracted a series of descriptions of the ornaments and decorations from John Ruskin’s catalogue of the architecture of Venice and placed them tautologically as friezes on the wall of the building.
When we read in these neons: Forms of the earth (crystals), Forms of water (shells) we see a text and at the same time we have to imagine a column capital, a string-course, a decorated entablature. This work is based on the research on forms of representation that characterizes the artist’ work since his beginnings.