Exhibitions

Fragmentos de una obra inacabada Rosendo Cid From June 17 to July 31 Santiago

1. As Jacques Derrida would say, every poem runs the risk of being meaningless and would be nothing without that risk. The same happens to many works of art: that they may be completely meaningless, or unfinished or in a continuous process of completion. Because when and at what moment do they acquire that meaning? That moment is, to simplify it, when the artist decides to finish a piece. A decision that is not so simple, since such a judgement responds - in most cases - to reasons of a very diverse nature, be they intuitive, random, conceptual, formal, or a sort of uncertain combination of all of the above. Hence, the question asked of an artist as to when he or she decides to finish a piece is answered in many different ways, generally tending to fall on the side of the imprecise. This leads us to suppose that many works, or why not say it, all of them, remain in that limit between meaning everything and nothing; or, seen in another way: waiting for that meaning external to themselves that will make them really transcendent -once the artist considers them finished-.

 

2. The conclusion of all the above is that works of art are undoubtedly prepared for any eventuality and can respond and conform to more than one theory or even be above any speculation we might elaborate about them. We can also venture - because of this incomplete nature - that everything produced by artists can be understood as fragments, loose parts or even chapters of a larger whole that should perhaps then be read and interpreted as if it were a 'great novel', for artists' decisions are not constructed and maintained in the same way or under the same circumstances and contexts; and that, over and above any consideration, any work or group of works will always remain in a kind of unfinished state, for if this were not the case, what could be expected of something that no longer admits of change? Would that work or those works be destined to be what the artist wants them to be or what those works themselves claim to be, thus obviating any other interpretative contingency?


Rosendo Cid

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