Annenstraße 53. Work by Lorenzo Sacchi. Image credit: Simon Oberhofer
A flag is painted with photosensitive chemicals commonly used in analogue photography. When exposed to light, the applied chemicals will change colour, becoming darker with time.
Our first exposition at Annenstraße 53 is of a work that is the outcome of a process of reflection that Lorenzo Sacchi engaged with during the course, Art-based Investigation: Exhibiting the Thing, at the IZK - Institute for Contemporary Art, TU Graz. This course took place during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Struck by the sudden transformation of social relations towards restricted physical presence and prolonged confinement and isolation, students explored the idea of Exhibiting the Thing, from these new conditions. Considering the finished artwork under conditions of confinement, as well as processes of conceiving art, they asked if art exists before its exposure to the audience. How can art exist if it cannot reach the other? Students questioned the relationship that art has with an audience who know of its existence and long to encounter it, but have no access to it. This work, produced under such conditions, was first exhibited at the entrance of TU Graz in front of the Alte Technik, hoisted among other flags.
Lorenzo Sacchi writes: ‘A reflection on unfulfilled promises, expectations, future, and present as becoming -never-ending and product-less transformation and identity. A flag is used as a representation of a fixed identity or institutional status to be maintained, but in this case, the colours and the appearance of the flag are always changing and thus challenging the fixed relations. The media of photography is reduced to its photosensitive quality and used to express transformation while undergoing transformation. In this sense, the exposure of the work of art to the public corresponds to its photographic exposure and to its own realization in becoming, bonding the two processes together.’