Senza titolo (Urvasi e Gilgamesh), 1988

“Dear… I believe that things do not exist. A glass, a man, a hen, for example, are not really a glass, a man, a hen, but only the verification of the possibility of existence of a glass, a man, a hen. In order to truly exist, things would have to be eternal, immortal; only in this way would they be not merely the verification of certain possibilities but truly things.” In these words, Gino De Dominicis begins his Lettera sull’immortalità (Letter on Immortality), 1970. Addressed to a woman whose identity remains unknown, the letter reveals the cognitive tension that animates the artist’s research. Obsessed with the incessant passage of time, in 1969, on the occasion of his first exhibition in Rome, De Dominicis exhibited his own obituary. [...]