Saâdane Afif, The Fountain Archives
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Fundació Antoni Tàpies Carrer d’Aragó 255, 08007 Barcelona
Image courtesy of Fundació Tàpies.
Saâdane Afif has turned the printed dissemination of Fountain into a monumental project. The Fountain Archives is formed by three elements: the first, the "active" part of the project, holds the pages of publications, books, catalogues and magazines that reproduce a photograph of this iconic piece. The pages, taken from the collection of publications that the artist has been collecting since 2008, are torn out, framed and inventoried.
The second, the "passive" part of the project, which Afif also calls the "mould," is the library with the books from which the pages were taken. The shelves create an archive around Duchamp’s ready-made, from which the common initiator has been removed: an archive without its object.
The third element, called Fountain Archives (Augmented), integrates the pages of publications with the comments generated over the years by Saâdane Afif’s work, illustrated with a reproduction of Fountain; the archive within the archive. These publications point to an evolution in the development and perception of The Fountain Archives as a work of art.
True to his way of doing things since 2004, Saâdane Afif has also commissioned several cultural producers to write lyrics based on Fountain for this project. A selection of these songs is part of the exhibition.
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Fundació Antoni Tapiès, photo by Vicente Zambrano González courtesy of Ajuntament de Barcelona (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).