Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti's work explores the order and disorder of communication systems. This work is part of his series of monumental ballpoint pen drawings, for which he invented a code. Reading the commas from left to right in relation to the vertical alphabet at the far left, one can decipher words for the five senses in Italian: vedere (to see), udire (to hear), odorare (to smell), gustare (to taste), toccare (to touch), and a sixth added by Boetti, pensare (to think).
Gallery label from Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, April 22, 2009–January 4, 2010.