Michael Demers
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Work from Date Paintings (You Tube).
“The conceptual artist On Kawara has produced an ongoing series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple lettering set against a solid background. If the painting could not be completed on the day it was begun, it was destroyed.
Date Paintings (YouTube) differs in that the date which comprises the work is auditory instead of visual, comprised of a text-to-speech file read by the computer and uploaded to YouTube. Here, the “painting” becomes an ephemeral object, the memory of the read-aloud date replicating the memory of the destroyed paintings On Kawara could not finish on a given day…” – Michael Demers