meaning is a machine that creates transparency. it strives for bypassing any given material composition or display by means of skipping over and reducing it to an invisible layer in the overall attainment of making present what’s signified. although impossible to dispose of, and necessary inasmuch as conveying meaning, the material stance of any sign, object, affect will give way to that intangible realm of utmost expression where either concepts or the ineffable psyche exists in intangible suspension. language is the most prominent example here. the linguistic sign carries meaning, which appears only as the material support that carries it disappears. we say (write) “making present what’s signified” and we go through all those groups of sounding visual letters locating ourselves immediately in an understanding or not of what they say. we say (write) “déanann sé seo ciall” and we don’t (as long as we don’t know gaelic), we stay on this side, we remain with the letters.

we learn to mean and to find meaning as we learn to speak, and we try to make everything into a language as much as possible; we won’t cease in trying to pass through reality and our lives in order to understand them somewhere else, beyond the concrete material arrangement where they take place. we make a language out of our family. of our friends. of art. of our thoughts. and for the most part remain blind to what carries the meaning we attend in this transparency—now this transparency, as complete, is merely ideal. the more matter turns onto itself and the more conspicuous it is, the less meaning proliferates. repetition is key in deterring from meaning. loops, mantras, copies, obsessions, reproductions, echoes, quotes are the starting point in turning the matter opaque and not disappearing in front of our senses to take us to a meaningful realm. the photographs in this room are layers of this place, identical to themselves, opaquely transparent and transparently opaque, extra layers of pre-images that go through the “thing” towards it.

installed at Telephone (Pittsburgh); 2024