Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: This work by Mario Merz is titled "ACCELERATION = DREAM, FIBONACCI NUMBERS IN NEON AND MOTORCYCLE PHANTOM." Made in 1972 and refabricated in 1989, the work features a motorcycle installed high up on the gallery wall with neon numbers trailing behind it.

The motorcycle is a red Honda Dominator. It is installed sideways, or at a right angle to the gallery wall; the tires touch the wall as if driving full speed along it, defying gravity. Everything about the motorcycle is expected except for one thing: enormous ankole horns are placed over the motorcycle’s handlebars. The yellowish-white curving horns extend about 4 feet on both sides of the motorcycle, twisting and curving to sharp point. This swap of the handlebar machinery with the ankole horns blends the visual associations with a speeding machine and a charging animal.

Trailing behind the motorcycle, along the upper gallery wall, are light blue neon numbers. These numbers are written as if scrawled in cursive, with trailing tails in front of or behind them that create long spaces between each. The spaces lengthen between each number as they become farther from the motorcycle and increase in value: one...one...two....three.....five......eight.......thirteen........twenty-one.........thirty-four..........fifty-five...........eighty-nine............one hundred and forty-four.............two hundred and thirty-three..............three hundred and seventy-seven...............and ending with six hundred and ten.

The length of the neon numbers extends along the upper portions of four gallery walls. Their precise placement in a line behind the motorcycle’s tires gives an initial impression of tire marks, or a marked pathway, behind the bike’s path. These numbers begin the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers formed by adding the two previous numbers together. The sequence relates to systems of generation, found in nature’s spiraling forms. What does this work express about patterns, generation, and time? What is the modern motorcycle’s relationship to ancient patterns of nature?

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