EP 16: ENRICO PEDRINI’s IRREVERSIBILITY AND THE AVANT-GARDE: AN ESSAY ON PHYSICS AND MODERN CULTURE analyzes the theoretical relationship between discoveries affecting our perception of the natural world, technological innovation, and the ongoing discourse of the avant-garde. He explores particularly the impact of Werner Heisenberg’s Theory of Indeterminacy on culture, and the manner in which unstable systems give rise to progressive developments. This essay laid the groundwork for a show he curated in 1992, entitled “Beyond the Artist,” which consisted entirely of books dealing with scientific discoveries exhibited like sculpture on pedestals.

ENRICO PEDRINI was born in Montesano, Filighera (Pavia), Italy in 1940. He has supported Conceptual Art both as a theorist and a collector since 1969, placing particular emphasis on the work of Bernar Vernet, Art and Language, and Victor Burgin. As a collector, Pedrini concentrated his efforts principally in the areas of Dada, Fluxus, Minimal Art, Arte Povera, Vienna Aktionismus, and Graffiti Art. Since 1977, he has published many books of art criticism, which have examined issues in Anthropological Art, Conceptual Art, and Possibilism.  John Cage, Happenings, and Fluxus (1986) and The Quantic Machine and the Second Avant-Garde (1991) discuss the relation between quantum theory and the visual arts movements of the 1960s.

ENRICO PEDRINI is currently studying the interaction of dissipating systems, chaos theory, and new potential in art. He has curated many international exhibitions, including at Studio Oggetto in Milan, Gallery Persano in Turin, and Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Nice. He curated, with Wolfgang Becker, the Taiwanese Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale. IRREVERSIBILITY AND THE AVANT-GARDE: AN ESSAY ON PHYSICS AND MODERN CULTURE is his first book translated from Italian into English. He lives in Genoa, Italy.

First edition paperback, November 2004, 104 pp., sewn, bound, and printed in Italy, with a two-color cover, fourteen black and white illustrations printed on patinated paper, and a black and white photograph of the author on the frontispiece. Bilingual edition with an English translation from the Italian, and a preface, by Daniel Rothbart. 

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