Una macchina è una macchina

A double solo exhibition dedicated to Vincenzo Agnetti and Tomaso Binga. A dialogue between two artists who, since the 1960s, have favored the use of words as an expressive medium for “that process of transformation whereby thought, experiences and life become ‘artistic operations’” There are many points of contact between the two: the use of poetry, performance practices, and the conception of art as a synthesis operation. These were the years of experimentation, the advent of extra-artistic materials and more up-to-date technologies, which inspired and influenced research in the area of new art languages. Among the various mechanical and technological media, the typewriter constituted one of the tools that numerous artists in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s used to create their works. The well-known essay The Art of Typewriting, edited by Ruth and Marvin Sackner, traces a review of them within which Tomaso Binga-an artist linked to the gallery permanently for a long time-with his Dattilocodici made with an Olivetti lettera32 figures. From an error of typing two keys at the same time, a sign is generated that in turn, through the compositional choice of the artist, will give rise to a cryptic linguistic code and original images. Vincenzo Agnetti does not appear in the essay: it is 1969 when the artist exhibits for the first time, at Cenobio-Visualità in Milan, La macchina drogata: a Divisumma 14 Olivetti calculator in which he substitutes alphabetical and punctuation signs for numbers. The audience is invited to interact with the mechanical instrument, producing a collaborative, performative action defined by Agnetti as “static theater.” The original letter Del teatro statico, concerning, among other things, the metalinguistic function of language, the demystification of information and the relationship with consumer society, will be exceptionally displayed in the exhibition. The two artists’ research is first placed in dialogue on the occasion of the gallery group show Fare uno, from word to sign a possible dialogue ( March 2023) and later – comparing Dattilocodici with Prodotti della macchina drogata – within the miart 23 project. The intent of this exhibition, through this exceptional unprecedented focus, is to reflect on how the work of these two artists has extraordinarily anticipated what is happening today in the field of new technologies, artificial intelligence and new media as producers of works of art through the past creative implications in the relationship between man and machine, which becomes autonomous and “alive.”