English Version | Imagine that...

And that's all it is asked of you. To imagine. Because this work of art doesn't exist. Meaning, it only exists in its author's imagination. Even though it requires real exhibition space and safety perimeter and description slip to go along with it. Have you ever seen something like this before? It was never seen before, nor is it seen now. Could you ever imagine such a thing?

Artwork de João Oliveira.

When Salvatore Garau sold his work Io Sono (“I am”) for €15,000 at the end of May, it made headlines around the world. Why? Not for its price, but rather because the “piece” (whose bidding in the Art-Rite auction started at 6,000 euros) doesn't exist except in his head. Nevertheless, and even though the return home was done lightly, meaning, without a work of art in hand, the buyer took with him a certificate of authenticity and instructions on how to "display" it: the creation should be showcased in a private residence, in a room with at least 1.5 x 1.5 meters, intended for the work, so that it's free from obstructions. Sound stupid? The 67-year-old Italian artist argued at the time: “The void is nothing more than a space full of energy and, even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this 'nothing' has a weight,” he explained in an interview with the Spanish newspaper AS. “It has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, in us. […] It is a work that asks you to activate the power of imagination.” Salvatore's idea is based on the notion that by exhibiting an “immaterial sculpture” in a given space, the thoughts and perceptions of those who “see” it are concentrated in this void, creating countless shapes and shadows in the sculpture, and “the absence as an absolute protagonist of the times we live in” was the premise that led him to create something beyond the physical. “After all, don't we attribute a silhouette to a God we've never seen?”, he concluded.

Garau's reasoning did not convince everyone, be it from or outside of the art world, having garnered as many critics and skeptical comments as media coverage. Not only because of the episode's contours but also because of its dubious characterization as immaterial art. Perhaps the Italian artist's sculpture will be nothing more than bits and bytes and some ink in headlines that made some noisee at a certain point in time, but it makes room, in its emptiness, to talk about the possibilities and impossibilities of contemporary creativity. In this case, starting with the immateriality that characterizes his work. Can an invisible work be considered art? It may be controversial to say in this particular case, but history has shown that art has gotten more and more creative nuances, many of them touching on the idea of ​​the immaterial – although we are not sure that Io Sono belongs to this spectrum. Immaterial art may not assume the physicality of a work, but it does not exclude some level of existence: if material culture proposes the presence of concrete elements, immaterial art refers to abstract elements such as habits and rituals – think of dance , for example. But physical abstraction is not synonymous with its non-existence. "I believe that, in general, and particularly in the history of the visual arts, the protagonism and the antagonism, sometimes, between emptiness and presence, between materiality and immateriality, is at the essence of the definition of what the visual arts are, and this type of tension has been a central point in the history of modern and contemporary art”, begins by contextualizing Beatrice Leanza, executive director of MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. With an enviable CV, Leanza arrived at the museum in 2019, after 17 years dedicated to contemporary art, design and architecture in China. The right person, therefore, to contextualize the multiple contours of contemporary art. “I don't think the dualism here is between material and immaterial. Rather, it is linked with materialization. It's like experiencing, or defining, in a way, the phenomena, concepts, ideas, and the medium that artists use to attract an audience to the experiences of this understanding of the world, of this existence, so to speak. There is a current in modern contemporary art called 'institutional critique', that is, it is a branch of specific conceptual art, which includes names like Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, Daniel Buren, etc.. Hence, a number of international artists (particularly of Western origin, ie the United States and Europe) are beginning to grapple with the idea of ​​using art as an agent in the exhibition, visualization and materialization of the entanglement between power and politics behind institutions. And a lot of that work isn't necessarily based on the physical creation of something, like formal visual sculpture. It is based on the materialization of connections, relationship systems, etc. And this can take many different forms.”

In fact, in an era in which tools have multiplied, the way to convey the message has also multiplied, meaning it doesn't always go through the most widespread artistic molds: “I think that, in general, the purpose of creative practice is to reveal certain unknowns, so to speak, and when I talk about creativity I mean in the broadest sense of not being confined to the work of what is a prototype of the visual arts”, shares Leanza. She adds: “Creatives, artists, have become more militant around this invisibility that is so characteristic of the system of capitalism, and in fact it is an invisibility that is so present in our cities and in our lives, than the means of creativity have become less and less a discriminating or determining factor in defining practices, and more and more themes have taken center stage.” Art has, in fact, gained an increasingly notorious activist dimension. “Here at MAAT we have a good example of this. I think it's a definition of the times we live in. Particularly with the advent and dominance of our digital and online life, where these limits… it's not that they don't exist, they're simply irrelevant. And that irrelevance became manifest in the past year and a half, where it is incorrect to think or say that the digital and the way of living remotely changed or completely transformed our way of life, because we only perpetuated the paradigm that we were already living, even long before the pandemic. We didn't make a different use of the digital tools we had, we didn't live in the digital sphere in a different way than we did pre-pandemic, it just gained a little more predominance in the way we communicate or interact, but nothing new really came out of it. I think this dialectical dichotomy between material and immaterial doesn't make much sense in the world we live in anymore”, she confesses. Which is not to say that she applauds or includes in this meaning the work of Garau; in fact, Leanza doesn't have an opinion on the matter – which she considers a non-issue: “I think it's a non-conversation, in the sense that we live in an era where value systems are often also based on the opinions of peers, and we've created ways for ourselves to support and validate positions that are complicated and often disturbing to some extent. But considering everything we've been through in the past year, if there's one thing that's been proven it's how we've managed to create relevance: just look at all these movements and the new fronts that we've streamlined because of the spread of discrimination, for example. It is a non-conversation because it does not contribute to any current and existing conversation about what the materialization of value, experience, etc. can be. It's a dead end because it doesn't add anything to current issues, it's irrelevant." Even though Garau argues that the "piece" enjoys some existence (in his mind and in the mind of those who perceive it), the argument does not seem to gain unanimity as to its validity - and it will certainly not be the sale price that will do it: “Paying 15 thousand euros for a sculpture that doesn't exist only validates it if you use money as a measure of appreciation; I use other value systems to appreciate meaning and relevance these days,” concludes MAAT's executive director.

But it generated enough gossip to reach the present day and raise pertinent questions. For example: is there a line that separates what can be considered a work of art from what is not? What determines it – is it the critics, the public, the buyer? “The creativity system is a peer system. It's not a hierarchy, it's not like in the scientific world; it is a network system”, explains Beatrice Leanza. “It's a validation system that operates in many different ways. I don't know if there is a limit to what can be considered art, nor do I think that is the issue. I think it's a matter of timeliness, relevance and engagement. And what measures the attributes of a body of work, a practice, a research, is the constellation of factors and elements that make the result something relevant, relatable, a source of concern. Parameters change over time, and artistic and creative practices are linked to the present. It's always about the present, and the present doesn't exist. It's a tangle of times and processes, it's this way of unfolding reality with perseverance, and it changes over time, all the time. Therefore, there is no book to consult. I think, to a certain extent, even irrelevance and negative emotions are dimensions that you can jump into as a way of engaging with what's being presented to you. The asshole will remain an asshole and today's society is full of them. But, again, there is no book you can consult to judge whether systemic racism is good or not, it's life and your value systems and your peers that teach you that. And I think that whatever parameters we apply to whatever surrounds us or the experiences we voluntarily or involuntarily expose ourselves to are the real frontiers to face. Therefore, at best, it's an exercise of streamlining your values ​​and judgments; at worst, you waste money.” Whether Io Sono's buyer has wasted money or not, only he must know. The truth is that the work – time will tell more about its relevance as an art than our immediate judgment – ​​is seen as any other work, that is, there were even those who accused Salvatore of plagiarism: following the sale, American Tom Miller has threatened to sue Garau for stealing his idea without crediting him, as Miller installed his own invisible sculpture, aptly titled Nothing, in Gainesville, Florida, in 2016. The question is: if the sculptures' are different, although the idea of non-existence is the same, is it still plagiarism? If so, this seems to validate the absurdity of there being no sculpture, since it doesn't actually exist, there is only emptiness. And if there is only emptiness, can the void be plagiarized? But more importantly, does this all sound like nonsense?

Nonsense is thinking that the concept of art is a closed one – although there may be some consensus here about how ridiculous it is to go home with empty hands and a sculpture “in your head” for the bargain amount of 15 thousand dollars. Nonsense is continuing to approach art as a set of pieces that are exhibited in galleries and outdoors, when the end of the 20th century and now the 21st century have ensured that this type of categorization is profoundly diminuishing: “Reality is, it seems to me less interesting to talk about the art world itself and more interesting to talk about how the creative world has, nowadays, been agglomerating a variety of practices of disciplinary origin that go beyond the obvious. Many of the younger ones, don't come from a formal artistic education and I think this is a language that I think, particularly within the art world, should be learned about a little more. I think that within the art world there are certain paradigms that continue to be perpetuated, such as the idea that the global superstructure of art lives on its own sense of self-definition, or self-greatness, which is no longer the case with regard to [the act of creation] in the creative world. And it seems to me that it's something that the younger generations don't want”, concludes Beatrice. Perhaps many of the examples that are listed as absurd are tied to their simplicity – like the case of Banksy, the case of Aconcci, or the case of Rauschenberg. Whether Garau belongs here, we're not sure. But we are sure that the more space there is for creative freedom (instead of an emptiness), the more surprised we can be. Even if ot may seem, imagine that, absurd.

Tranlated from the original on Vogue Portugal's The Nonsense issue, from July/August 2021.