Mattia asked to meet me in order to physically see the ‘Infinite Painting’ and hear me talk about it in my own words after his teachers had asked him to ‘copy’ it, starting with the intrinsic meaning of its process and significance. 

 

FORCING TO COPY

Why is it important for a human being to retrace the steps of another human being? 

What does dealing with the question of the ‘Copy’ mean for an artist today? 

What are the mental movements that persist in wanting to use this form to construct a work? And how can this form be used as a teaching method?

I will let Tonus and Zoico deal with this question by adding a link to the presentation of their course.

 

Linkto the course program by Tonus and Zoico

 

COPYING

What does it mean for a student, a young artist, to stand before the work of a living artist they can relate to directly? 

What does it mean to superimpose the thought of another in order to bring out one’s own individuality? 

Is it possible to understand this trajectory as something that is one’s own? 

Where is the divergence between the person embarking on the journey the first time and the person undertaking it after them?

I’ll let Dierickx describe the experience in his own words. Here’s a link to his article.

 

Link to Mattia Text

 

BEING COPIED

What does being copied mean for an artist? 

What does it mean to have all these eyes on her? 

What does this type of gaze and attention to one’s work provoke? And what is elicited when seeing one’s own form duplicated? 

What is generated inside of you by the fact that someone else has tried to undertake exactly the same journey that you had previously undertaken?

 

RECIPROCITY

Feeling that I have been referenced on the journey punctuated by my existence opens up the possibility of me not feeling unique and alone. It eradicates the centrality of my work, halving the gesture and amplifying the sensation of perceiving myself together with someone else.

The idea that a person can repeat and continue my gesture, making it their own individual trace, gives me the chance to prove that what I am doing is part of something that can be shared with another individual. 

If I know that the procedure of the person referencing me is experienced as their own and related directly to the specific individual experience, and not just as something extraneous to copy, then the resulting work that I can see with my own eyes becomes the way for me to find myself outside of myself, in the other.