Try Not To Think So Much

Eugenio Ampudia (ES) 

Winning Piece at the XIII Edition of the ARCOmadrid/BEEP Electronic Art Prize (2018)

Modular synthesizer, 200 x 150 cm. A/P from edition 5.

With this piece Eugenio Ampudia continues in the line of anterior works, emphasizing the character of art as an effective means of communication, but on this occasion the artist plays with the paradox of breaking this flow with communicational noise. By applying the term “noise” to communication, he speaks not only of the annoying sound but also of any interference in this process. With this piece he alludes to the kind of communicational noise we inhabit and which envelops us, and which is transformed into a silent method of influence in our daily surroundings.

The artist signals this communication, which in the art world tends to be endogamic and self-referencing while promoting discourses that supposedly bring culture closer to the spectator. The fact that the noise of the piece is created from the appropriation and superposition of barely tangible theories related to the art world is a wink at the theoretical apparatus and the codes that sustain the art system. The phrase is a compound amplifier, and each letter has a perturbing mission that allows Ampudia to configure pieces of a story that also speaks of the subjectivity of discourse and opens doors towards thoughts such as the discourse of power or Foucault’s power of discourse.

Try Not To Think So Much / Eugenio Ampudia (ES), Credit: Martin Hieslmair

 

Try Not To Think So Much, 2018/Eugenio Ampudia (ES), Credit: Mo Li