We know the structure of DNA but we cannot remember the alphabet of the genome.
We are not able to read a hair despite being clear that it can include enough information to clone our best friend.
Should the inability to relate to this type of information be assimilated to blindness or defined as a new illiteracy?
In both cases, the most advisable thing would be to assume with patience and resignation that we are condemned to know more and understand less, victims of semiotic indigestion.
Every day, we watch television without being able to tell the difference between a live broadcast and death.
The extreme percussion of a news item prevents any possible repercussion. It rains an overdose of drama and comedy that anesthetizes us to become, by saturation, a censorship tool more efficient than scissors.
We are founding the society of the dysfunctional information: reality becomes unreadable; and the visual arts, invisible.
Stop understanding is my profession. Understanding less and less requires rigorous training. Not understanding is basic and very healthy. When we don’t understand, we doubt, we feel insecure. We slow down our decisions, we multiply our attention, we are delicate and very careful.
When we have no doubt, when faith and its certainties accompany us, we become a public danger capable of making urgent and radical decisions.
In art, in diplomacy, and in automobiles, speed is tragic.
Drawing is like writing in a language you can’t read.
Drawing requires respecting only one traffic sign: STOP.
I am a promoter of pauses and my intention is to suggest a protocol mutation to make time visible. Computers speed up and connect over long distances to allow us to slow down and get closer. Reduce the scale as a gesture of humanization and exercise delicacy as a subversive activity.
Marco Maggi was born last century in Montevideo. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of NY at New Paltz (1998) where he now resides. He participated in the biennials of Mercosur (2001 and 2003), San Pablo (2002), Havana (2003), Gwanjú (2004), Pontevedra (2006), Guatemala (2010), Cuenca (2011). His group exhibitions include: Drawing from the Modern 1975-2005 (MoMA, New York, 2005), Gyroscope (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, 2006), Poetics of the Handmade (MoCA, Los Angeles, 2007), New Perspective on Latin American Art 1930-2006 (MoMa, New York 2008),
Al Calor del Pensamiento (Daros Collection, Santander Foundation, Madrid, 2010).
In January 2012, two solo exhibitions: “Lentissimo” at Vassar College in New York and “No Idea” at MoLAA (Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California). In a few days, on March 7, he inaugurated his exhibition “Functional Disinformation / drawings in Portuguese” at the Ohtake Institute in São Paulo.
Press release and CV written by Marco Maggi.
