For Nothing

n the seventies, it is widely believed, Western art lost faith in its own originality and got caught in an endless retro-vision. There was nevertheless something terribly original about the art they produced. These thoughts went through my head when Domenico de Clario showed me the premise of an exhibition he was curating called For Nothing. It read like a manifesto from the seventies: Is it possible to make a work whose raison d'etre is not dependent on critiquing another artist? Is it possible to make a work that does not cost anything to make, that does not aspire to be sold and that does not refer to anything other than itself? Is it possible to make a work whose values run counter to the society we live in? Is it possible to make a work that does not consider itself as art?