We Are Free!
YEAR: 1998
CATALOG NUMBER: 136
PROVENANCE
The artist
Private collection, Italy
NOTES
See No 134, 135
EXHIBITIONS
Colle di Val d’Elsa, San Gimignano, Italy
Arte all’Arte 98, 12 Sep 1998 — 17 Nov 1998 (Organisation: Associazione Arte Continua, San Gimignano)
DESCRIPTION
The installation should be erected on the wall inside the cafe located on the Piazza Canonica in Colle di Val d’Elsa. The installation will be arranged to the right of the cafe’s entrance, between the mirror and the window looking out onto the square.
From afar the viewer can see the inscription on the wall, We Are Free! (Noi Siamo Liberi!), written in a fine black outline. But approaching closer, he suddenly discovers that this inscription is formed from a multitude of flies sitting on the wall (the flies, of course, are artificial, made of plastic). Immediately, a tragic-comic metaphor arises in the consciousness of the viewer: flies, as everyone knows, usually fly in various directions in complete freedom and chaos, but here they are arranged in a distinct, compulsory order only so as to proclaim loudly and clearly that ‘they are free!’ This metaphor does not require commentary.
In order to ‘protect’ the flies from the visitors, as well as to impart to the viewer of the installation a sense of a completed artistic whole, the text is covered with plexiglass, 185 x 220 cm in size.
Literature
