As it is always the case with the remake, comparison is what is at stake�the then of the original, the context in which it came to light, is compared to the now of the remake. The then of Morellet�s originals was one in which certain narratives uploaded into the work a utopian potential. Mid-century geometrical abstraction sought to produce new concrete visual facts, sidestepping representation, anthropomorphism, and authorial presence. It sought to be the plastic analogue to the coming socioeconomic facts that progressive programs of distributive justice promised. The then of Espinoza, on the other hand, involved the move toward a more radicalized use of art production in relation to political causes. The �Impenetrable� emerged at a time when studio practices are morphing into political praxis. The now of both of these remakes�our now�involves a spectacularizaton of social relations, as it�s registered in both design/architecture and in art itself. Geometric abstraction now signals �successful corporate structure� and/or �quaint historical effort� more readily than �progressive alternative aesthetics.� Whatever animating power this sort of abstraction may have once drawn from the experiments of Russian constructivism and concrete art, and later from a politicized conceptual art, it now finds itself sterilized as it is transmuted into decorative element/historical specimen. Although both Morellet and Espinoza, in some sense, remake their work in order to line up with the demands of our attention economies and historical amnesias, they also cast out into the world works that subtly drag an original referent that complicates any reading. Their remakes pull an original that refuses us any interpretations that don�t involved historical comparison. As much as these remakes �bend� to contemporary demands, they also make us aware of the way that these demands become determining factors in art production and how they are bound to the larger material conditions of our existing neo-liberalism.
1. Lutticken, Sven, �Planet of the Remakes� in Secret Publicity: Essays on Contemporary Art, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, p. 133
Eugenio Espinoza Gainesville, FL Florida North America
