All at the Same Time 1991

Description

The space is lined on either side with unmounted green flags that lean against the walls below their brackets. Potted trees are placed at the entrance. Large cardboard shipping crates sit near the front door and the walls remain scuffed.

The lines and swirls of a large fingerprint have been sanded into the floor. The sawdust generated by the creation of the fingerprint has been swept neatly into piles or captured in plastic sandwich bags both of which appear throughout the space.

An old player piano has been rigged with an electronic eye to scan and play music based on an enlarged version of the artist’s fingerprint. The piano is flanked by shelves, neatly stacked with unlabeled archival boxes. Recorded sounds can be heard coming from beneath the floor.

Artist Statement

I enjoy the fact that time seems to run faster than I felt it did just a couple of years ago. I don’t mean that I feel fatigued or I am not doing very well. To the contrary, I feel rather happy and my health remains very good. All at the Same Time interests me as a work that stays away from dependence on any psychological obsessiveness or the distortion with which so many artists choose to be associated. Also, I was reluctant to employ any systematic aesthetic routine designed to guide me or the audience in search of a central illuminating point. The desire for such a point is nostalgic and corrupts the need for inventiveness and significance. I like the idea that art and culture have nothing in common, that the first must stay independent from the other, which keeps on going thanks to the repetition of its own premises.