Cinque Per Cinque Venticinque 1983

Curator: Immediately, it reminds me of… overgrown scales, like some ancient sea creature's back, slumbering just beneath the surface. Or maybe roof shingles underwater? What am I even looking at? Editor: You're looking at “Cinque Per Cinque Venticinque,” or “Five by Five Twenty-Five” a mixed-media work created by Alighiero Boetti in 1983. It’s an interesting fusion of collage, print, and what appears to be watercolour, featuring a field of geometric forms marked by punctuations and crowned with the alphabet. Curator: Geometric alright. So mathematical and obsessive. You said "punctuation," I'd say teardrops, or little white pills, scattered randomly. Makes the whole thing a bit melancholy. Also a commentary of colonialism or something... but I feel something else there, deeply ingrained! Editor: There's a rich conceptual layering at play. Boetti's practice frequently interrogated systems – language, mathematics, classification – and the power structures inherent within them. His employment of seemingly objective systems becomes a framework to reflect on colonial histories and the construction of meaning. This work plays on pattern, rhythm, and the tension between order and disorder that resonates across disciplines, perhaps suggesting something much broader. Curator: Order and disorder, yeah! That's where the juice is. It's trying to categorize everything with those damn commas floating around the middle like, "but wait... what ABOUT all THIS?" I'm probably projecting. Editor: Maybe, or maybe you’re touching on Boetti’s deconstruction of established structures. What happens when we arrange or force structure onto something and claim it as finished, or, in essence, knowledge? His commentary transcends mediums because he highlights our collective drive for classification, particularly the historical ties between colonialism and epistemology, and the limitations that stem from these ingrained practices. Curator: He really got under my skin. Makes you question the boxes we put everything into, including, naturally, art itself. Editor: I’d agree. Boetti’s layered approach really invites us to reflect on how meaning itself is built, both individually and as a culture. What seems simple is anything but, leaving you, in a really potent way, questioning.