Alessandro Di Pietro: Ghostwriting Paul Thek

Di Pietro resurrects the corpus of Paul Thek, while sourcing inspiration as to what his practice might have become today

In developing an exhibition that places his own sculptures in dialogue with those of Paul Thek (1933–88), artist Alessandro Di Pietro (born 1987) imagines what the late artist’s career could have resembled had he not died at such a young age. To create these speculative works, Di Pietro sourced original writings on himself and Thek—essays, WhatsApp messages, diary entries and newspaper articles—from 25 authors, providing the intellectual context for Thek and Di Pietro’s intertwined ideas. The resulting compendium for the exhibition that traveled to New York, Switzerland and Italy is a reader on Thek and Di Pietro that, just as in ghostwriting, blurs fact with fiction and maintains a certain ambiguity of authorship.
Contributors include: Carlo Antonelli, Paisid Aramphongphan, Giulia Bini, Anna Castelli, Dustin Cauchi, Fabio Cherstich, Luigi Alberto Cippini, Guido Costa, Paul Cotton, Anna Cuomo, Allen Frame, Niccolò Gravina, Noah Khoshbin, Chris Kraus, Owen Laub, Massimo Minini.