In this essay, the Spanish artist Julio Plaza, who lives in Brazil, discusses the differences between “the work” and the “discourse about the work.” He concentrates on the links between the verbal and the nonverbal, which notably includes a reading of semiologic theories. He therefore makes a distinction between the artist’s exhibition process and the critical discourse based on the art object. He understands that the essential aspect of art is its language that defies discourse or words. Plaza refers repeatedly to Marcel Duchamp and Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom he describes as “nonverbal thinkers.”

Julio Plaza had a solo exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Global, in São Paulo, from June 29 to July 8, 1977, that also included the presentation of the Foram books, Poética, O cadeado [The Padlock], and Reduchamp.

The multimedia artist, professor, and theoretician Julio Plaza (1938–2003) was a well-known figure in the world of Brazilian conceptual and electronic art, acknowledged for his graphic versions of several concrete poems. He worked with the poet Augusto de Campos to produce books and objects such as Poemóbiles (1974) and Caixa Preta (1975). He was a professor at the Departamento de Multimeios do Instituto de Artes da UNIcamp (in Campinas), and the Departamento de Artes Plásticas at the ECA/USP (Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo). He organized the first videotext exhibition in Brazil: Arte pelo Telefone: Videotexto (São Paulo: Museu da Imagem e do Som, 1982), where he was responsible for the new media salon at the seventeenth Bienal de São Paulo (1983), which introduced electronic art to Brazil. In his doctoral thesis (published later as a book), Plaza discussed his ideas for an inter-semiotic translation that converts literary texts into visual and audible codes. 

[As complementary reading, see the author’s articles in the ICAA digital archive: “Arte e interatividade: autor-obra-recepção” (doc. no. 1111093); “Arte e videotexto” (doc. no. 1111090); “Busca da dimensão mais firme para a realidade” (doc. no. 1110750); “Câmara obscura” (doc. no.  1110718); “Imagemega” (doc. no. 1111133); “Info foto: grafias” (doc. no. 1111091); “O livro como forma de arte (I)” (doc. no. 1111238); “O livro como forma de arte (II)” (doc. no. 1111239); “Mail-art: arte em sincronia” (doc. no. 1110592); “Manifiesto pro integración” (doc. no. 1110751); “Nem oito, nem oitenta: oi, tô aí” (doc. no. 1111270); “Poéticas visuais” (doc. no. 1110587); and “Transcriar” (doc. no. 1111237)].