Untitled

1973

25min

The only video work Kounellis has ever made: His vision, in the small exhibition itinerary, takes place beyond a black curtain, in a small room created inside the exhibition space for visitors to enter one at a time. It is alone that one goes to interrogate the oracle. From a monitor, placed higher than usual, the mask of Apollo appears in its unshakeable immobility. Kounellis holds it in his right hand, while in his left he holds a lit oil lamp. There is the measurable time of the video, the 25 minutes of its physical duration: The historical time exists in which the artist offered himself to the fixed shot of the camera. Lastly, there is perennial time, the incorrupt cycle of the ancient Divinity who has always presided over the manifestation of light and art and of which Kounellis is but one of the infinite epiphanies.