This publication, accompanying the exhibition of the same name by the Generali Foundation, explores the relationship between text, image, and thought.

Taking Stéphane Mallarmé’s experimental poem Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard and its iconic reworking by Marcel Broodthaers as a point of departure, the book examines artistic strategies in which language is treated as a visual, material, and ideological structure.

At its core are artistic positions that question the dynamics between sign and meaning, legibility and image, language and power. Artists such as Robert Barry, Lothar Baumgarten, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Rodney Graham, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and Ian Wallace show how written language transcends its role as a mere vehicle for information to become an aesthetic event in itself. Letters, words, and typography detach from their utilitarian function and open up fields of critical and poetic reflection.

Rather than proposing a system of classification, the publication presents an alphabet of ideas—of gestures, interruptions, repetitions, and visual displacements. Language appears as both concept and material, as structure and disturbance, as a site of ideological critique and lyrical subversion. The result is a panorama of artistic practices that oscillate between conceptual art, visual poetry, and political image-making.

More than a catalogue, this book offers a discursive companion to the exhibition: a dense, thoughtful collection that turns language itself into a space of inquiry. It is a quiet yet compelling appeal to think with—and against—language in contemporary art.