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International |
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Artist sells his Life!
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The French artist Michel-Vincent le Goff who lives and works in Florence, Italy will sell three years of his life. "I wanted to commit to a visual work of art my recent reflections, my inner most feelings, my notes and what better medium than actually displaying them in their contemporary binary incarnation : the hard disk of my computer where I have consigned three years of my life from the year 1994 to 1996 covering the period I was with my wife Raichel in Oxford until the period I laid the foundation of my island Studio on Hydra in Greece."The hard disk records the birth of the artist's son and literally everything he did on a daily basis including details of his finances and arguments with his wife. "I am conscious that selling one's most intimate memories is irreplacable and very personal but I do live a very unconventional life and the concept really appeals to me. I want people to ponder, what is on the disk really? illicit surfing ? non-politically-correct opinions? visual records of actual works of art now destroyed? anything could be there."The artist quite rightly, places a high estimate on these precious three years. Whoever buys "Memory" cannot read the hard disk unless he or she vandalizes the work of art to satisfy curiosity. Le Goff also wants to put across the idea of how blindly we trust and rely on this modern technology alluding to the thousands of emails ordinary people are sending daily from home computers that reveal their innermost secrets, sometimes telling all to complete strangers on chat lines. The internet has become a vast dumping ground for pent up human emotions. Are people fully cognizant of what they are committing to disk memory? A hard disk is easily removed from a computer and can be read by others, emails can be intercepted. By owning someone else's hard disk you quite literally own a piece of their life. Its more complete than a penned journal or diary, which is carefully composed, the closest anaology would be a permanent record of what you pour out on the analyst's couch only with shopping lists, bookmarks of favourite websites, illegal downloads, images and even home movies thrown in. The hard disk in "Memory" is set against
a background canvas covered in 23 carat gold leaf with a complex engraved
design that wittily recalls the same chequerboard lines of the omnipresent
Microsoft Windows' logo. The inner workings of the hard disk are exposed
and resemble some mysterious time mechanism, which it is really, compressing
three years of a persons's life mercurically into its matt surface.
"Memory" is being handled by Santo Ficara the leading gallery in Florence and will be shown in Le Goff's one man show there this Autumn. In the field of contemporary art it is
difficult to create something new. Le Goff has pulled it off, marrying
hi-tech with the traditional skills of Florentine renaissance gold ground
panel painting and "Memory" conveys a powerful message to us all.
"3 Years of my life" on canvas 40 x 60 cm 23 carat Gold leaves on textured canvas Computer Hard disk Michel-Vincent Le Goff 2000
The artist in front of his
Hydra studio, Greece. Pictured holding a panel from "Matrix Forms" a diptych
that will be exhibited by Santo Ficara Gallery of Florence at the BOLOGNA
FIERA, Italy 25th January - 30th January 2001.
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