Art Critic

Art, with its desire for immortality, has undergone a “lifting”, a restoration of works destroyed by time or jeopardized by man. Instead, regarding contemporary art, restoration seems to be an oxymoron. Why restore works that have been created
intentionally by the artist with ephemeral, modern, daily and extra-artistic materials?
Instead, I believe that this is due also to a contradictory narcissism of the artist, and especially to an art market which creates circulation and a collection based on profit.

To this date, restoration of contemporary art has been faced in Italy with the same hypocrisy of the Welby case: oblige a person despite his/her desires, or an object, to survive.
Avoiding any act of euthanasia, we are incapable to respect someone else’s intentions. If contemporary art is a production more of concepts than of objects, then it would be interesting to impede, to be exact, any restoration (works done with ephemeral and weak materials). To give honour to artists, this is my proposal: bury the artists with their works.

Therefore, like the Pharaohs, it is a way to give homage to contemporary art, but with rigour and irony which have always characterized the strategy of the historic avant-gardes, neo-avantgardes and trans-avantgarde.

Achille Bonito Oliva