Everyday’s aesthethics
The project plan is clear: to make at least one artwork a day for the
whole year. The main difficulty is encountered during the reading, when you try
to make sense of each little work in order to find a red line that links them
all. Soon you realize it’s a tough exercise, so much as a useless one. You
won’t be able to build a structure, make up a system that establishes solid
relations between the various creative interventions, like they were elements
of the same sequence. The only orderly form is the time frame, limited to the marking
of the general edges of the operation. Time is the container of the countless
actions, marked in order to avoid losing their memory within the flux of life.
Encapsulating time between a beginning and an end assumes there is perspective
logic: 2004, the numerical
measurement of the artworks. Each exhibited item is, in fact, dated in order to
document the course of the work done. In this way it is possible to establish a
pattern of creativity. Let’s take, for example, the most prolific day of the
month of January, Wednesday 14th, with eleven artworks, or the month
of February, where the chart is topped by Monday 9th with thirteen
works. In both cases we are in front of ink or pencil drawings, relatively simple
and fast techniques that favor the increase in production. Saturday March 6th
is at third place with eight artworks, and again the techniques are similar,
ink and watercolor on paper. Thanks to the updated archive available on www.stefanopasquini.net one can complete
the provisional chart – who writes is still in the month of December – of the
most prolific days of the year:
1)
Monday, February 9th
– 13 –
2)
Wednesday, January 14th
– 11 –
3)
Saturday, March 6th
– 8 –
4)
Saturday, January 10th
– 6 –
5)
Wednesday, April 14th
– 6 –
6)
Friday, January 9th
– 5 –
7)
Sunday, January 25th
– 5 –
8)
Sunday, February 1st
– 5 –
9)
Wednesday, April 28th
– 5 –
In order to maintain this type of classification one can also work by
chronological measurements. The most prolific year is January with 73 realized
artworks. February follows suit with 56, March with 50, April with 49. After a
healthy start, production reaches stability between 35 (June) and 48 works
(October). You could compile more statistics and diagrams, even advance target
plans and future forecasts, as if Pasquini’s production was comparable of that
of a factory. All you need to do is take a look at the weekly updated website
to verify the latest results of Pasquini™. From here to a weekly competition to
guess the number of artworks made each week, a Lotto-art, it’s a small step, and the times are ready.
Today, like never before, so many mental and economical resources are
finalized to the making of games of luck, whose prize can change an unsatisfied
life. The work 2004 can be seen as an
answer to this malaise. All you need to do is get offline, wait for the end of
the year and experience the work in the gallery. The technical control imposed
by the scrupulous updating of the website over any creative solution can be
detrimental, and menace to reduce art to a mere information data.
It is thus necessary to exit the virtual gallery of time, the analytical
document list, and live the effective quality of the works.
After a first examination we notice the diversity of techniques and
media. Pencils, watercolors, acrylics, ink, wine or blood stains are applied to
paper or cardboard, train tickets, uncashed checks… every surface is good as
long as it welcomes a track sign, every media is good as long as it contains
information. That’s not all. Pasquini makes abundant use of photographic
prints, digital files that can contain images, text, graphic PDF documents, and
music. The presence of advanced technology solutions is significant, but
doesn’t imply a lack of tradition, such as the use of the ready made object, some handcraft sewing, and even performance art
and happenings, reaching maximum accomplishment with Yumi, born on July 19th. A diversity, this, that doesn’t
undervalue the body of the 2004 work.
In order to guarantee its conceptual identity there is always a coherent
approach in regards to reality. A free and light attitude veined by an irony
that questions any dogmatic position.
This much versatility reflects an open mindedness ready to value the
aesthetics and noetics that are present in every day contingency. You need to
know how to catch them, you need to be there. The presence of someone with
active senses is needed in order to read, on the plane of life, the reflexes of an art to make true, to display as
an object. In reality, to an exquisitely conceptual view such as Pasquini’s,
even the worst case scenario can become an orgy of intellectual stimuli. The
same perceptive apparatus, aware of the work in progress, becomes more
sensitive of the aesthetic dimension of ordinary life, discovering an
inexhaustible source of creative remands every day. Matter-of-factly,
everything can be declared as art, as long as it is an established artist to do
so. And Pasquini is such an artist, as it is ironically certified by the Real Artist Certificate dated February
29th. At this point it is clear that the creative activity is not
the goal, but just a means to something else.
The purpose of realizing at least one artwork every day overcomes the
questions around the making and its reason. Whoever comes close to 2004 with the intention of reading every
single work is destined to get lost in the semantic maze of everyday living.
Many works are so much linked to Pasquini’s private life to become almost
hermetic. It is necessary, thus, to look further than the product and reflect
over the process that generated it. It is a pervasive process that questions
the notion of quality over quantity, informs day to day life and animates it
with colors that are usually under a pile of dust otherwise called routine. This everyday aesthetic is capable of lightening the obtuse consistency
of life, alleviating the malaise by the cleaved sound of matter. Instead of
looking for a refuge in the hope of an extraordinary resolution event, Pasquini
goes down to ordinary life to find it enriched of aesthetic values.
Daniele Astrologo