THEORETICAL OBSERVATORY

Repetition as Difference: Ontology of the Identical

The first performance on the theme of repetition dates back to 1985 and was titled "The Shared Breath." The action consisted of handing five identical balloons—same shape, color, and material—to five different people, asking each to inflate them fully. Despite the absolute identity of the starting materials and the uniform instruction, the final shapes were completely different. Each balloon had acquired a unique morphology, determined by the breath, pressure, rhythm, and specific gesturality of the person who inflated it. In 2006, this research was translated into painting with the creation of two paintings intended to be identical. The project did not stem from any attempt at mechanical reproduction—fully aware that absolute identity was impossible—but rather aimed to confirm, on the plane of pictorial materiality, what the balloon performance had already revealed: the ontological impossibility of identical repetition and, at the same time, its extraordinary generative fecundity. This process is theoretically grounded in Kierkegaard's concept of authentic repetition. For Kierkegaard, repetition is never a return to the same but an existential movement producing the new through the retrieval of the identical. In his thought, to repeat means to "re-grasp" existence in an always different way: every attempt at repetition is, in fact, an act of creation transforming both the subject who repeats and the object repeated. The question of repetition cannot be tackled with the tools of traditional aesthetics, which still rely on nineteenth-century categories of originality and uniqueness of the artwork. Instead, it is necessary to penetrate the heart of an apparent contradiction: how can identical repetition generate difference? How can the equal produce the diverse? The impossibility of identical repetition finds its deepest root in the temporal dimension of existence itself. Time, as a fundamental dimension, continuously modifies the space in which every repetitive act takes place, rendering absolute identity ontologically impossible. Every gesture, brushstroke, and attempt at identical reproduction is inscribed in a unique and unrepeatable temporal moment that radically transforms the spatial coordinates of the action. Time is not simply the neutral background where repetition unfolds; it is the active force that constantly distorts and reshapes the artwork’s space, preventing any two creative moments from ever coinciding perfectly. The temporal transformation of space creates what might be called an "ontological differentiation field," where every repetition, simply by occurring at a different time, is inscribed in a qualitatively changed space and therefore necessarily generates a singular identity. The decision to create a series of paintings all identical—same subject, colors, identical composition—belongs to a profound philosophical tradition that finds in "Defunctionalizations" a fundamental theoretical precedent: the process by which objects, stripped of their original function, acquire new morphology and new ontological determination. To fully understand the meaning of the repetitive choice, it must be situated within an artistic-theoretical trajectory that has shown how intentional disruption of object functionality automatically generates a transformation of meaning: the object “A-intact” with meaning “B-coherent,” once compromised in its function, becomes “A-mutated” and acquires a new determination “C-native.” This transformation process through negation parallels surprisingly with the practice of identical repetition. Here too, it is an apparently destructive operation—the negation of originality, uniqueness, and novelty—that produces a generative effect. Every repetition of the painting is like a "defunctionalization" of the previous work: it deprives the latter of its claim to uniqueness and originality, yet precisely through this deprivation generates new possibilities of meaning. Repetition, like defunctionalization, is an operator of ontological transformation. It does not merely produce copies but activates a continuous metamorphosis process in which each artwork retroactively redefines the meaning of all the others.

Certain artistic practices use seriality to reflect and incorporate the logic of mass production—transforming art itself into reproducible merchandise and celebrating the aesthetics of the identical—while here pictorial repetition asserts the irreducible resistance of the creative gesture to any automatism. It is not about multiplying to disseminate, but about repeating to discover. Each new painting is not a more or less successful copy of an original but the emergence of an absolute singularity affirmed precisely through the repetitive intention. This is a complete inversion of serial logic: whereas some practices assume reproducibility as a given and explore it aesthetically, here repetitive intention is assumed to philosophically uncover the impossibility of repetition itself. One knows the paintings will not be identical, yet persists in the intention to make them so. What makes this operation philosophically relevant is the awareness of this paradox. It is precisely the tension between the will for identity and the necessity of difference that forms the theoretical core of the artistic project. Each painting is inscribed within a specific temporality that determines its singularity. As the same painting is produced over time, the hand retains the muscle memory of previous gestures, but this memory does not result in mechanical automatism. On the contrary, it creates a temporal tension field where past and present intertwine in ever-new configurations. The memory of the previous gesture influences the present one but does not fully determine it. Between memory and act opens a space of creative freedom that no repetitive intention can erase. The series thus presents itself as a kind of existential chronicle, a temporal record of transformations through the repeated practice of the same gesture. Each work is a moment unto itself yet connected to previous works by a temporal thread that crosses and unifies them.

Philosopher Deleuze helps us understand this paradox: for him, when we repeat something, we are actually always repeating difference—that is, always creating something unique through a gesture that would want to be the same. It is like trying to trace a drawing: every time you redo the same movement, something slightly different emerges, something belonging only to that moment. Therefore, each painting is not an attempt at more or less successful copying of the others but the manifestation of something absolutely unique. Difference is not an error with respect to a perfect identity model but the force generating newness through repetition itself. This conceptual reversal has profound consequences for the aesthetic evaluation of the work. It is no longer about measuring each painting’s fidelity to an original but grasping the irreducible singularity that each expresses. The choice of painting as a medium is not coincidental, though it is not exclusive. Painting, more than any other artistic form, highlights the impossibility of identical repetition. Each brushstroke or chromatic variation leaves unique material traces. Yet in this practice, the medium’s material resistance does not constitute a limit to the realization of the repetitive project but its very foundation. Precisely because painting resists mechanical repetition, it becomes the chosen medium to explore the philosophical paradoxes of authentic repetition. However, these theoretical principles do not remain confined to the pictorial realm. Repetition as an operator of ontological transformation can extend to other expressive forms—from sculpture to performance, writing to musical composition—wherever it is possible to establish the fundamental tension between repetitive intention and the necessity of difference. Each expressive medium will offer its specific material and temporal resistances to identical repetition, thus generating differential fields peculiar but philosophically homologous to the pictorial one. Each new repetition cycle carries the temporal weight of the previous one, creating what one might call an "aesthetic and conceptual distortion" similar to that described in "Defunctionalizations." Just as the mind continues recognizing the original morphology of a defunctionalized object due to mnemonic information linked to its "ex" meaning, so the experience of the new series will inevitably be filtered through the memory of the preceding one. From this perspective, each work in the series must not be evaluated in relation to the others but grasped in its absolute singularity. The series is not a collection of variants around a theme but a multiplicity of singularities each affirmed within its own difference.

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