POLITRIX-BOOKS
Advice for the Aspiring at the
Twilight of the American Century
University Gallery
Cal State University, Sacramento, CA
November 1, 2012 - February 2, 2013
The Machiavelli series was initiated by an off-handed remark. In 1995, after the fall of the Wall, the wildly expansive Berlin art world was immensely competitive. I ironically commented to a friend that what was required was Machiavelli, though for Berlin a special Machiavelli "for kids." I produced the text and the 31 small oil paintings that visualized it in the next few weeks. The project seemed to expand of its own accord. A Child's Machiavelli was eventually published in 3 languages and several print editions.
Eighteen years later, it will be released as an enhanced e-book application to teach young people political philosophy. Harold Moss, Creative Director of the multi-media studio FlickerLab, and his wife Negin Sharifzadeh have launched their new imprint, Moss Collective, to bring the work of contemporary artists into this new digital publishing frontier. A Child's Machiavelli is their first project.
Politrix-Books includes the original 1995 Machiavelli oil paintings as well as gouache drawings and an animation projection that is the source material for a following Hart/Moss collaboration, A Child's Art of War, based on the text of the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu. Also included in the exhibition are the first pages of the A Child's Machiavelli, the first Hart/Moss project, to be released in the iTunes App Store in winter, 2013. The first draft of this custom e-Book has been presented in Mac iPad format.
Claudia Hart
December 16, 2012
View A Child's Machiavelli PDF