
Photo n.1050/013/02
Two paintings. Like two people waiting to be portrayed, revisited, recognized. In a certain sense, two handmade photographs. For more than six years I have kept these two people with their shamelessly resigned faces under interrogation in my studio. I knew that sooner or later I would give a meaning to their wordless dialogue. At the very least I would find signs of numbers capable of recalling their intonations.
I knew that something that is already a work of art can be made to yield a new work of art only by a combination of understanding and cynicism.
I also thought about background noise, which is where the voices of the past seem to conceal themselves.
The voices are lost only after their meanings are lost.
This explains the phrase I have written on these two paintings, now attached to one another: Herewith I transmit a dialogue without meanings.
Vincenzo Agnetti, 1974
Original source: http://members.aol.com/mindwebart2/agnetti2.htm