Galería Cayón is pleased to present Global Myopia (Language in Residence), a 30-minute video that compels viewers to immerse themselves in the intervention realized by Marco Maggi (Uruguay, 1957) at the 2015 Venice Biennial.

Over the course of four days, the artist, in collaboration with María Inés Arrillaga, arranged to film the viewers who entered the Uruguay Pavilion in the gardens of the biennial, somewhat unsettled by its apparent emptiness. In reality, and contrary to that initial impression, 10,000 micro-works covered the walls of the pavilion, forcing the viewer to pause and look.

Now the point of this current video is quite different; we, the spectators, become viewers of the Venetian spectators, even though, given the placement of the camera, we are incapable of seeing what they actually see on the walls. The result is a reflection, not only on what it means to be a spectator of a work of art, but also on being an ordinary citizen whose awareness is constantly being bombarded by the media with information that we must ultimately filter (assuming we are able to).

We are presented with a work capable of enhancing our empathy for what is truly meaningful. Marco Maggi recommends that before watching the video, we look very carefully at a ream of paper. By focusing on the 500 sheets of paper one by one, we can attest that no two sheets are alike, whether in size, thickness, or color. The degree of variation among the sheets in a ream will depend exclusively on the viewer’s attentiveness and level of observation.

It is not easy to enter willingly into emptiness. Global Myopia (Language in Residence) is a thesis-free parenthesis.