I've been looking through 'Life's balance werk 84-04' by Baldessari.. and unfortunately most of his work in this book is lost on me... although what I do understand of his work, I find humorous. For example, the wallpaper of his Zurich pieces compares the visual appearance of different items- a lightbulb to a potato, a pizza to a clock, an ear to a pretzel...
I find 'No more sin' to be an interesting piece- he gets rid of the sin of lovers by seperating them from eachother using a 'cut and paste' method. It seems a very child-like way of trying to make the world a better place- as if by cutting them from eachother in the image removes their sins.
However, my favourites of his work are found in his purely text pieces. The reason for researching him in the first place was for this piece:
I must not make any more boring art.
The piece is self- contradictory, as it itself may be considered 'boring', as it is merely a repetition of words on a page. However, this joke also makes the piece interesting, and no longer boring- a vicious circle.
In addition, I feel the piece serves as a reminder to artists- to remember not to produce work that is boring. To capture the audience's attention, to make them think, to get them interested. The act of writing lines forces you to remember what you have written- so that the message is so built into us that we can't help but follow the advice.
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