The Ouroboros is the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feed-back’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites.
In the show’s curatorial essay, Massimiliano Gioni expands on the issues explored in Alpha Omega, referencing an excerpt of Plato’s Timaeus. An exhibition of mirroring presences, doubles becoming one, and ones becoming double, Alpha Omega presents a selection of works from the Dakis Joannou Collection. Artworks are re-interpreted to create a show about cycles and circles, where the end echoes the beginning. The installation incorporates quotes and excerpts by, among others: Ambrose Bierce, Jorge Luis Borges, Andre Breton, William Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, Carl Gustav Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, and Mark Twain.
Triple Candie’s Maurizio Cattelan is Dead: Life and Work, 1960 – 2009, a post-humorous retrospective on the life and art of Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960), is also presented as a component of Alpha Omega. Triple Candie is a place-based, research-oriented gallery in Harlem, NY, that produces “exhibitions about art without art” following an original program model that isn’t dependent on artists or their galleries. The exhibition, which looks like an educational primer on its subject, has been conceived in the form of a detailed timeline with extensive wall-texts, all of which are factual and exhaustively researched. Instead of actual artworks, the show includes photocopies and printouts, a handful of sculptural recreations, surrogates that stand in for absent sculptures, props that function like biographical artifacts, and ersatz examples of Permanent Food and Charley – Maurizio’s magazine projects.
