Saturday, 16.10.2021
twine, gardening tools, straw, earth
800x800cm
A tribute to Paul Gherasim & PROLOG Group
Part of the travel exhibition Wittgenstein 2021, Castelnuovo Rangone (MO) / Torrione Medievale, Via Matteotti 24.10 - 7.11.2021. Curated by Denise Parizek & Laura Rambelli
Àgnes Hamvas & Hubert Hasler, Mandarina Brausewetter, Maria Grün, Valentina Lapcheva, Michael Koch, Yukika Kudo, Oscar Cueto, Rafael Lippuner, Stefano Bernardi, Svetlana Mircheva, NOIMA, Eva-Maria Schartmüller, Laura Rambelli, Robert Reszner, Vera Klimentyeva, Franz Wassermann
Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: „In the beginning was the Word (Λόγος - Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
We started our intervention from a sign taken from the geometric compositions of Paul Gherasim: Purple Lambda, oil on canvas, 134 x 134 cm, 2005.
We set out to redraw this sign on another scale, in a land art intervention, so that the process becomes a new language game played within the “life form” - NOIMA. The chosen place was a terrace of the Mureș River located on the Târnava Pleateau (The southern part of the Transylvanian Plateau), near an Orthodox monastery patronized by the author of the fourth gospel (Saint John the Apostle).
The sign contains an octagon consisting of two squares. In Paul Gherasim a square is purple (associated with the earth). The other square, rotated, is golden ocher (sign of the transfigured sky). In the purple square is cut the Greek letter Lambda from Logos (The Incarnate Word) - a symbolic abbreviation. A painting like this can be seen as a result of a translation process, it proposes a grammar with certain meanings.
We sought to find natural ways and materials that can be associated with these meanings. The result was a new translation adapted to a collective work. New rules of the game. These are related to the examples of language games proposed by Wittgenstein: „giving orders, and obeying them / describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements / constructing an object from a description (a drawing) / […] play-acting / translating from one language into another...”
The redesign also brings to mind Markus Locker"s remark about language games: „new aspects of a language-game emerge always from existing contexts and language-games, and new games always result from already existing games”.
However, the chosen content is also controversial, in relation to Wittgenstein"s relativism. Lambda, Logos, can have many meanings (according to Wittgenstein these meanings differ from one convention to another, from one game to another). We opted for a meaning placed by John the Apostle at the beginning of all things and meanings. The point of the game refers to the meaning assumed by Paul Gherasim and the Prolog group in their relation to the world. Is there an archetype of all language games?
Ciprian Bodea, Cosmin Frunteș, Dan Gherman, Andrei Rosetti, Sorin Scurtulescu
Special thanks to the Hieromonk Pantelimon Şuşnea
