Para-d’Ox

«Give me a paradox I will explain the world»

1974

mixed technique 75x75 cm

Dedicated to the lever of Archimedes and to Luigi Pirandello

This work consists of a parachute and an ox supported by a letter ‘D’. Items are upended, to visually recreate the concept of a paradox.

Paradoxes characterize our everyday existence. We can confuse plenitude with scarcity, the good with the so-so, the legal with the illegal, creating a comic and disturbing effect. Fortunately and unfortunately, we are not strangers to such illogical thinking, but neither are we far from supposing that the paradox may be intrinsic to the path we must take. Paradoxically, perhaps the only way to recover our identity is through madness, as Pirandello describes in his short story ‘The Wheelbarrow’. In that story, a disillusioned lawyer despairs at the disjointedness between his ‘real’ self and the social mask he is forced to wear. He resolves to survive this paradox by enacting strange personal rituals. It is the contradiction between the lawyer’s personal inner world and the role he plays for society that constitutes human existence for Pirandello. We seek sanctuary in madness to avoid the loss of
identity. We take refuge in the paradox of dealing with a society that, unable to understand reality, must break down the real in its most dramatic aspects.

Hence the reference to the words of Archimedes: ‘Give me a lever and I will move the world’ is here extended to imply: ‘Give me a lever to move the world… give me a paradox to explain it !