2024

Vicens Vacca shows his latest work OR GOLD
Gold sheet wall assembly with speaker ready to broadcast from the bottom of a stool. Conveniently adjusted OR GOLD

OR GOLD
To give a name to an artistic piece, OR not to give it one, because indeed, untitled is already a name, meaning that it doesn’t have one, but in fact it does have a name which states that it is nameless. This business has supporters at both extremes, in favour of naming OR of not doing so, because not giving it a name gives a greater degree of freedom to the spectator of the thing, so let them do it if they want, but perhaps it’ll make the thing even harder, which is hard enough as it is, the contemporary art thing, because sometimes it seems that they don’t give a damn about contemporary art, and they may be right, and if we give it a name OR we don’t, maybe they won’t give a damn anyway, because interpreting a thought process can easily be tiring for anyone who is not inclined to follow the thing, with a name OR without it. I, however, give it one, because from my condition as an amateur with a professional resolution, self taught by choice, the fact that much of what I do is simply because I do it, I think, I don’t believe,_ it is customary to say I believe, when if fact, rather than believing, one usually thinks_ I think, therefore, that it may be good to put the thing on track towards a zone of written thought, and then I find that if I say OR, which is the name that best fits my thoughts for the piece I have in mind, so that’s what I’d better give it. Moreover, it has the thing of the two languages, because with Catalan and English, you don’t need to know much about either of them to realise that some words coincide in the letters and in the meaning, and others coincide in the letters but not in the meaning, and so one can build up an atmospheric discourse; such as, for example, with the words SILENT, and VIOLENT, and also with the word ON, and also with the word JUST, and also with the Catalan word for GOLD, OR, which, over in England, is not read as GOLD but as an alternative hinge, and so we could find dozens more, dozens of words to gradually expand what has probably already lost any memorization of the case in hand up to now, because OR, in Catalan, is GOLD in English, the paradigm of that which is valuable, luminous and positive, but OR in English is the Catalan O; it loses the R of OR, so that now, if someone reads the O in Catalan, it will be perceived as an option, a choice. An option of what? To choose what? If OR says one thing and O says another, the doubt will be established of what it might be best to choose, in the English way, when a thing can be anything, maybe the loudspeaker can become part of the piece, or what is said through this loudspeaker is the thing, or even GOLD as a length of wall; but as always, the participating spectators will give whatever value they feel to whatever they see, hear OR experience; and I wish them the splendour and the resplendent shine of the brief, short, blinding moments that no one will ever be able to take away.