Samuel Alcobia

The work that Samuel Alcobia presented for the participation in the Ariane de Rothschild Prize for Painting is the exact reproduction of the form that was to be filled in in order to participate in the contest. With the duplication of the “entrance ticket” in a particular system of artistic reception – considering that in this prize there is a selection of works to be shown in an exhibition, i.e., placing young artists in a visibility platform –, the artist questions, precisely, the context which he wishes to enter. The form refers to the conditions of admission, legitimating, and validation in the artistic context – the regulation and the jury embody the selection process, the prize, the exhibition, and the catalogue express the consistency of the contest, and finally, the history and the reputation of the contest endow them with a specific identity. This work is inscribed in a self-confessed conceptual line in which the proposal of an idea dictates over the image, although in the reproduction of the “copy” the artist has simplified the original (transforming it into a representation): transforming the writing, the lines and the spaces into drawing. The work is in a permanent state of activation – it will have been discussed in the selection process, it will be discovered in the reproduction in the catalogue, and will be talked about in the context of the exhibition – and hosts in itself the intention to communicate its own trajectory.