On the Appearance of Noncircularity

By Liam Gillick, Technical Director: leticrion

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There is an unresolved dichotomy in my work. One central element is the creation of a contemporary abstraction based upon color systems and secondary forms extracted from the built world. The other crucial elements are statements, texts, equations, and graphics that point directly at the difficulty of enacting a process of critical abstraction today. This work combines these elements into one artwork. On the surface this NFT is a simple proposition. “An infinite queue of artists... Each artist thinks at least some of the artists behind them... Are thinking an untruth.” The statement is broken down into three revolving circles. Each circle moves independently from the others. The statement refers to the relationship between the individual and the group and is derived from Sorensen’s queue paradox which, in turn, is his own version of Yablo’s paradox (J.C. Beall, Analysis 61.3, July 2001). In Sorensen’s case he writes of a “denumerable” queue of students. A set is denumerable if it can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with (the) natural numbers. The circular statement that comprises this NFT places the artist in an implicated role in a line with all other artists who could possibly exist. It places the artist in isolation in relation to creating art as a “production of truth.” This is particularly significant when we consider the disruptive status of the NFT as a form of art and its complex position regarding the history of Conceptual art, production, and exchange. On the surface, the work appears to be a simple statement related to art, logic, and mathematics. But here the Hexadecimal codes of the 200 or so colors that I have used for the last twenty-five years are reinterpreted as an algorithm that drives the paradox along with the relative speeds and direction of rotation. The ever-repeating cycle is tied to the blockchain; it is renewed whenever an NFT is burned on SuperRare as recorded on Etherscan.