Strategie di indeterminatezza: libri d’artista e arte concettuale

Book Design:
Paper: Favini Shiro Echo - White 90g/m2, 250g/m2
Format: 23x32cm

368 pages
Printed in Pesaro, PU
Year: 2025
Font: Univers Next Pro (Linotype),
Neureal (Laura Csocsán)

This catalog offers a systematic and comprehensive perspective on the theme of chance in conceptual art of the late twentieth century, articulated through eight foundational volumes. Starting with George Brecht and his Chance Imagery, which identifies chance not as a mere formal device but as an authentic operative method, the journey traverses diverse expressive media—from painting to écriture, from sound to performance, from choreography to play—focusing, chapter by chapter, on the theoretical principles and aleatory practices of each key book.

The visual opening section of each chapter is enriched with previously unpublished photographs and reproductions, arranged across double-page spreads according to an InDesign script that determines their placement based on random criteria, thus documenting chance as a structural element of the book-object. These are accompanied by introductory texts, curated by scholars and critics, which provide historical context for each volume, as well as integrated testimonies from artists such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Claes Oldenburg.

In the first chapter, dedicated to Chance Imagery, a final section of “integral texts” is also included: essays and reflections by Brecht that explore chance from its Dada and Surrealist roots to its connections with philosophy and mathematics, gathered in an appendix to offer direct access to his theoretical thinking and to make the catalog itself a conceptual “laboratory.”

In the following chapters, such as Silence by John Cage, chance liberates sound from conventional compositional hierarchies; in An Anthology of Chance Operations, the collective Fluxus laboratory is documented; in Assemblage, Environments and Happenings by Allan Kaprow, the spectator is called upon to intervene, transforming every action into a unique event; in A Year from Monday, chance extends to everyday gestures and objects, becoming an existential attitude; in Changes: Notes on Choreography, Merce Cunningham uses diagrams—true “computer hieroglyphs”—to layer movement, space, and light; in Store Days, Claes Oldenburg transfers indeterminacy to the selection of ephemeral merchandise, overturning the relationship between “high” and “low”; finally, in Games at the Cedilla, or The Cedilla Takes Off, play emerges as the ultimate form of indeterminacy, where performative texts and unpublished photographs document the collective gesture as a creative act.

The catalog concludes with an extensive body of critical essays, interviews, audio-video recordings, and a rich iconographic supplement that broaden its multidisciplinary scope. A final photographic gallery gathers documents and unpublished images, highlighting chance not only as an analyzed theme but as a genuine tool of editorial composition. In this way, the reading experience becomes active and participatory, reflecting the experimental spirit that animates the examined volumes.

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