Artist Project / The Ted Turner Collection—Report from the Battlefield (Paper on Uccello)*
DDDrawing on tradition
Marco Maggi
DNA: Watching a hair for hours doesn’t allow us to identify its owner, even though that hair includes much more information than any high-resolution picture. It’s now possible with a single strand of hair to reconstruct genetically even the most intimate details of a person. Knowing that a file as simple as “hair.zip” has embedded within it a forest of signs and codes that we cannot see or read has produced in us a new sense of myopia or illiteracy.
CNN: Watching the news for months doesn’t allow us to identify the reality behind an issue covered by the press. An infinite sequence of simultaneous, precise, and live reports is not enough to understand the difference between live broadcasting and death, between democracy and business. We are condemned to know more and understand less. This is not a contradictory process; it’s semiotic indigestion.
If something moves as fast as a bullet, it becomes invisible and supersonic. If something moves as slowly as a minute hand, it becomes still and uninteresting.
Examining a ream of the best-quality white paper proves that it is impossible to find a single absolutely white, silent sheet in 500 examples.
Seeing two pages printed with the same image confirms there are no two identical visual experiences. (Even McDonald’s has never cooked two burgers of identical shape, color, taste, texture, temperature, and context.)
Click here to download a template for creating your own DDDrawing on Tradition.
DIRECTIONS
Place a cutting mat under the printout. Using an X-ACTO knife (blade no. 11), cut and lift slivers of paper to create your own DDDrawing on Tradition. An example of a DDDrawing on Tradition has been provided below.
The below images were printed recto and verso, respectively, in the print.
Cuts on paper, paper on Uccello
8" x 10"
Tempera on wood
72" x 127"
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*“Turner, Ted: (born 1938), US broadcasting and sports executive, born in Cincinnati, Ohio; president of Atlanta Braves baseball team and chairman of the board of Atlanta Hawks basketball team; head of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., whose properties include station WTBS and news station CNN; bought over 3,000 movies to televise and received criticism for colorizing many classics.” (Source: Britannica Student Encyclopedia, 2002).
**DDDrawing: “The technical route of three-dimensional imaging systems in the history of art has been comprehensively traced by art historians, from the development of geometrical perspective in painting. This began with Brunelleschi and Alberti and soon became evident in such work as The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello.” (Source: Margaret Benyon, “The Prehistory of Holographic Art,” 1997.)
Marco Maggi lives and works in Montevideo, Uruguay. His work was recently included in the Fifth Gwangju Biennial, Korea; the VIII Havana Biennial, Cuba; the 25th São Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil. His next solo exhibition, “The Ted Turner Collection,” will open in April 2005 at Josée Bienvenu Gallery in New York. This year, his work will be featured in Vitamin D, a survey on contemporary drawing published by Phaidon Press.