Telepoesis, 2002

Digital Telescope, Plaque with poem
Dimensions Variable

Telepoesis is an installation composed of two objects, a digital telescope and a poem printed on a plaque. For the exhibition that took place at the Museo del Barrio Bienal, in New York, the poem was placed at the top of the Conservatory Garden's main gate (which is part of Central Park), located in front of the museum. The gate, forged in Paris in 1894 for the Vanderbilt mansion, was given by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum, to the City of New York in 1939. In 1996 it was extensively restored.

This beautiful entrance thus became an extension and support of the text which I wrote at the Conservatory Garden to create a Borgian circularity and complete "the poem."

Telepoesis depicts my interest in highlighting the importance of the poetic language, while sinthesizing the dynamics between the viewer and the artwork. Through this work I've tried to transform the act of contemplating an art object into a poetic experience. Poetry, of course, plays a vital role since poetry is in itself the work of art.

When I created this piece, I though about the poem as a metaphor of what we commonly understand by art, that is to say, an intangible entity attached somehow to the physical environment of an exhibition space, where the role of the institution serves as a medium to access the art entity, revealing the meaning of the work -the presence of the poem.