Throughout history, artists have taken images from other artists and periods: Dürer, Cranach, Brueghel, van Gogh, and Matisse all made copies. The list is long. Nowadays, and more frequently, these images and objects are originally produced for another purpose: advertising, scientific texts, phrases, stamps, photographs, portraits of important or unknown people, pieces of posters, found objects, etc. This includes Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup images and Antonio Caro's Colombian flag with the Coca-Cola letters at the bottom.
So, what is original in the production of these images?
One of the characteristics of what we call "contemporary" is that sometimes, it is not an innovation in the production of the image but a look at reality. In this look, the artist manages to transform those fragments taken from daily life without completely annulling or changing the conceptual content with which they were created. The artist returns them to the socio-cultural context, providing a critical look at what is every day for us and, therefore, insignificant or inconsequential.
Although in this exhibition, each artist retains the authorship of the work, attendees will be able to take home an “original copy,” which they can re-photocopy, scratch, draw on, fold, or frame. In such a way, these files are governed by the four rules proposed by Stallman.
Artists were invited to create an image of their choice, of which around 200 copies will be made per artist. Visitors to the exhibition will be free to take home any prints they like or are interested in.
The guidelines for the request made to the artists were based on the laws of open source or free code:
In the 1970s, the American programmer Richard Stallman, upset at not being able to use his printer because the software was for proprietary use, created a free-use application governed by four rules: