Review: A History of Objects by Carlo Pizzati

Carlo Pizzati’s A History of Objects is a collection of 23 short stories, each one dedicated to a specific inanimate being which, in the course of the story, becomes a cog in the author’s storytelling machine. Olrak emphasises that “conceptual art is all about the story” and so it shouldn’t matter whether there was any truth to the tale just told. What appeals to him is a more communal form of art making like the “balcony and courtyard concerts” which, in The Mask, become meaningful ways of community building during the pandemic when ‘social distancing’ had overshadowed every conversation. Through these different short narratives, mostly highlighting art and artists, Pizzati’s work itself becomes representative of the liminal space that fiction occupies between reality and imagination, memory and make-believe.