THE COLLECTION
Mario Merz (Italian, 1925–2003)
Untitled (A Real Sum Is a Sum of People)
- Date:
- 1972
- Medium:
- Gelatin silver prints, neon tubing, transformer, and wire
- Dimensions:
- Overall 24" x 16' 7 1/4" x 5 1/8" (60.9 x 506 x 13 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Mrs. Armand P. Bartos Fund
- MoMA Number:
- 129.1974.a-w
- Copyright:
- © 2013/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
2008
This sequence of photographs depicts an ever-increasing number of people sitting in a restaurant, numbered in neon above. These numbers follow the Fibonacci series, a system of growth (often seen in nature) that perpetuates itself by adding the two previous elements to arrive at the next. Merz began using the series in 1970. He has said, "I did not understand why a work of art had to be a certain length when it could be infinite. . . . In the Fibonacci series, there are no spatial limitations because space becomes infinite—not abstract infinity, but biological infinity."
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