Quoi? (What?) 1990

Made of natural materials such as wood and stone, these three works exemplify Jean Dupuy’s interest in the relationship between language and the physical world, looking at the ways in which matter and ideas can be distilled into pure elements. Dupuy was associated with Fluxus art — a radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s that interrogated disjunctions between form and meaning, often to the point of absurdity. As fellow Fluxus artist Ken Friedman writes of Dupuy’s work:

Dupuy believes that language is corrupt, is itself the corrupter. For him, all words must be infinitely plastic, malleable, all things capable of transformation into all things else. Words, like smoke, like clouds, have substance but no shape. To demonstrate their reshaped potential, he twists and turns them into an object-lesson on life and on life’s truth.