Gabriele Guercio – The Great Subtraction

Presentazione del volume di Gabriele Guercio.

Comunicato stampa

Forthcoming
The Great Subtraction:
A
brief account of select work by
Giovanni Anselmo, Elisabetta Benassi,
Gino De Dominicis, Francesco Matarrese,
Marisa Merz, Luigi Ontani, Cesare Pietroiusti,
Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Emilio Prini
a book by Gabriele Guercio
offers fresh insights into the general state of Italian art since 1965 by focusing on a select body of works by Giovanni Anselmo, Marisa Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gino De Dominicis, Emilio Prini, Luigi Ontani, Francesco Matarrese, and Cesare Pietroiusti. The author finds that a dynamic of subtraction variously informs these works, either constituting the genesis of the works or the fact that the creation of a work of art lies outside of pre-established cognitive and experiential rules. It will be shown, through a tour of select Italian works, that the laws governing the birth of artworks do not conform to precise order of signification.
I
s it possible to take the impermanence of being as an indicator of the very identity of a work of art? Is subtraction a feature inhering to the Italianess of Italian art? In addressing these and related issues, Guercio demonstrates that the modes of subtraction he discovers and presents not only encourage a revision of the received notions of Italian art and national art per se but inspire also new definitions of what artistic greatness may mean in a globalized world.
The volume is distinguished by the close collaboration between the author and the artists he has considered. Nearly every illustration in the book has been furnished directly by the artists or their estates, making a unique document that evades traditional ideas of art history and its subjects.
Gabriele Guercio is an art historian based in Milan and
New York. His publications include Art As Existence: The Artist’s Monograph and Its Project (The MIT Press, 2006) and numerous essays devoted to the history of ideas on art, as well as the work of Gino De Dominicis, William Kentridge, Joseph Kosuth, and
Michelangelo Pistoletto. Guercio has a doctorate in art history from Yale University and lectures on methodology and
contemporary art in Europe and the United States.
MERER. Paper Kunsthalle is based in Ghent, Belgium and
publishes select titles by Matt Mullican, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Joseph Kosuth, Mara Goldberg, among many others.
Please visit www.merpaperkunsthalle.org
For further information please contact
MERER. Paper Kunsthalle [email protected] www.merpaperkunsthalle.org
The Great Subtraction:
A
brief account of select work by
Giovanni Anselmo, Elisabetta Benassi,
Gino De Dominicis, Francesco Matarrese,
Marisa Merz, Luigi Ontani, Cesare Pietroiusti,
Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Emilio Prini
a book by Gabriele Guercio
MERER. Paper