Diego Tonus and Anonymous
A Moment of Darkness
Sculpture
Aluminum cement, Bitcoin, documents of the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property
2019
Courtesy MAMbo Museum Bologna (Permanent Collection) and the Artist

 

A Moment of Darkness is an aluminum-cement sculpture, life-cast and constructed to resemble a forger (Anonymous) whom the artist encountered. The figure poses without revealing its identity, lending its shadowed face to the work’s title.
Embedded within this anonymous sculpture is a metal sheet engraved with the key codes for 1 Bitcoin, hidden as a secret entrusted to the piece. This gesture removes value from the cryptocurrency chain, transferring it into the artwork itself by putting the sculpture into circulation – thereby affecting its estimate while preserving its secret.
The artwork explores inner notions of belief, both in its narrative and through the paradoxical tension between the artistic value of the sculpture and the concealed economic value within. Each is subject to the fluctuations of distinct markets and trade shifts, contained within a form that reflects the concept of belief in the creation of worth. The sculpture’s materiality hints at its fragility.

A Moment of Darkness is part of Fragments of a Conversation with a Counterfeiter. The project contributes to a discussion about the transformation and transportation of value, questioning the valorization of time and space in time of crisis. The series of new works derives from an assumed conversation between Diego Tonus and a forger (anonymous for practical reasons) revealing controversial thoughts related to contemporary systems that deal with the definition of value. Each artwork is the visual translation by the artist of this conversation manifested through the act of presenting objects, actions and words experienced by the forger within his practice of reproduction of value and ways of transporting it, hacking system of controls and dealing with the definition of individuality. Each artwork is presented in co-authorship with the forger. Tonus approaches the thoughts of the counterfeiter as if they were his intellectual property, questioning the ‘counter’ of counterfeiting and appropriating his ideas.

 

In order to share the appropriated forger’s ideas with the international audience, to activate and perform them, the artist has registered the works as trade secrets at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property. The validity of the trade secret is international.

 

Realized thanks to the support of Italian Council (2018), Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.