After over 20 years working with what generally is known as “drawing”, Maggi, -well known because of his intrincate technique that forces the spectator to pay attention to the most subtle details on the piece- will expand his work at the gallery, constructing an installation of 80,000 thousand sheets of paper that will be presented in 160 blocks establishing a path that invites the viewer to turn, stand and walk.
En defensa de las vocales (In defense of the vowels)
Immersed in the audiovisual world we are retiring smell, touch and taste: three senses that resist themselves to travel on the Internet. A similar fate suffers the middle digits from 2 to 9. No number currently discusses the hegemony of 0 and 1, icons of a century that, clinging to extremes, rapidly erase nuances and synonyms. Environmental reductionism especially specially affects vocabulary: ten antagonistic adjectives allow one to qualify or disqualify, in a second, the first or the last. In parallel, words lose letters every day: abbreviations, acronyms, textese, leet-speak, short hand, truncation.
They are all strategies to save time and hide meanings. Simplify communication in order to be less clear.
Spelling initials is without any doubt the most radical proposal in tweets, chats, instant messages, etc. Initialism was not compatible with slow communication methods like click, envelope, postage stamp or checking emails.
The less aggressive and more traditional antecedents of initialism: CIA, FBI, POTUS, DC, IP, GPS, NYC, AM, PM, FM, BMW, ATM, IBM, UPS, FIAT, WWW.
More significant, and less significant, is the initialization of complete sentences that I have no space to translate: ROFL, HTH, TBC, LLRC, IMHO, J/K, YW, PPI, OMG, LMK, LOL.
If the richness of vocabulary was essential for a precise thinking, the jivarization of the dictionary will reduce our heads. I’ve been trying to think only with initials for days. Erase almost all the letters to appreciate the space that separated the capital letters. This summer I feel nostalgic for consonants and in autumn I prepare myself to defend vowels.
The initial of a drawing is a point that is difficult to locate. Marco Maggi.
"En defensa de las vocales", Cayón, 2019.
"En defensa de las vocales", Cayón, 2019. (c)Ugo Carmeni
