Giorgio Persano is delighted to present a selection of important works by great contemporary masters in the spaces of the gallery’s inner garden: Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner, who are among the main exponents and theorisers of conceptual art, and Julian Schnabel, the illustrious representative of the American neo-expressionist movement. The exhibition is structured around four works that are united by the use of language which, to quote Weiner, is crucial in that it suggests that it is not necessary to create or construct in order to make art.
The works in the exhibition use writing – an incursion into the medium, as regards Schnabel, and a customary practice for the others – as a tool to alter the conventional relationship between signified and signifier, leaving the greatest level of interpretative autonomy to the observer.
According to Barry, while words respond to an aesthetic and to the space they occupy and create around them, they are to be understood more as signs to show that there is art, to indicate the direction in which it exists, to prepare for it, inviting us to transcend the limits of materiality. And it is this new creative dimension which presents the art object as pure language that has marked a significant turning point in art history.
