Zama, the lights, the nothing

Abstract

Di Benedetto wrote a series of essays on art and artists in the 80s which forced us to reread Zama. It is clear now that the image is separated from the ground, a distinct totality that breaks with the continuity of life in general. It does exert a force that comes from the relationship between the distinct or remarkable image and the invisible ground that surrounds it by being absent. The image does not merely symbolize or represent some other thing; instead, it literally presents the dissimilarity that inhabits resemblance. Art is image in its purest form, since art does nothing other than present this groundlessness of meaning.