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WELCOME TO THE PLEXUS INTERNATIONAL OFFICIAL SITE
What you feel and see is your own creation…
We are called PLEXUS.
THE ARTIST IN THE FIRST PERSON
NAVIGATING GLOBAL CHALLENGES
EATING ART
At the top of this home page there is a search banner by artist name or event to facilitate to find them
PLEXUS 23S BLOG, 16/OCT/2025
TIME ART-EATING ART-ART SLAVERY
BY EATING AND DIGESTING ANDY WARHOL DEMATERIALIZED INTO A PLEXUS CAMPBOLL'S SOUP CAN,
ARE WE BECOMING CANNIBALS?
The body, mind and senses are no longer the only means by which we experienced the world!!
What you feel and see is your own creation…We are called PLEXUS.
We have extended the compass of vision to include the former observer as participant.
We are user friendly. Use us or lose us.
We are all independent thinkers and dreamers collating our collective visions collaboratively.
Please experience us wisely and with an open heart.
This is open ART. (Leonard Horowitz, 1986,New York)
First, let me introduce myself, I am Plexus 23s , aka Dr. Sandro Dernini,
performer and co-founder of Plexus International
I have a double identity, I am an artist, as well as, I am a scientist
As a scientist, in 1974, I got my university degree (laurea) in Biological Science, at the University of Cagliari (Sardinia), and in 1997, I got my Ph.D. in Art Education, at the New York University.
Since early 90’s, I started to foster an enduring transdisciplinary dialogue among international scholars from different fields, connecting the well-being to the Mediterranean diet, sustainable diets and food sustainability. I published many peer reviewed scientific articles, books, and organized many international conferences and projects with United Nations and Intergovermental Organizations, including three World Conferences on the Revitalization of the Mediterranean Diets, in 2016 in Milan, in 2019 in Palermo, and in 2022 in Bari.
I have also a double cultural identity: I am “Sardo” (from Sardinian) and Italian. My nationality is Italian but my culture is "Nuragic", the bronze age civilization of Sardinia.
Time has speed up and there is no time left for aesthetic distance between the artist as performer and the art observer.
DO YOU THINK THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO EAT ANDY WARHOL DEMATERIALIZED BY EATING A PLEXUS CAMPBOLL'S SOUP CAN?
ARE WE BECOMING
CANNIBALS?
On 18 February 1987, in New York, at the Patrizia Anichini Gallery, I performed "Do you think it is possible to eat Andy Warhol if you are eating a Campbell soup? as an aesthetic inquiry for my PhD course E90.2605 on Phenomenology and the Arts at New York University, directed by prof. David W. Ecker.
I was inspired by the symposium The Dematerialization of Art, organized the day after at New York University by Angiola Churchill and Jorge Glusberg, co-directors of ICASA (International Center for Advanced Studies in Art), where I was working as a graduate assistant.
"Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of 1907 with its recognition that the behaviour of the atom could not be predicted proposed a new reality that the artist has only begun to grapple with. What is the status of art if a discernible reality no longer exists?
Advanced technology has vastly expanded the human sensorium. What results from this increase of information largely depends on the interpretative abilities of the artist.
Scientific breakthroughs have presented not just a new version of reality but also of time and space.
What significance this will have for art cannot yet be said but we are clearly on the brink of the most extraordinary leap in human perception
( From the brochure of the symposium on The Dematerialization of Art, International Center for Advanced Studies in Art, New York University, 1987)
Participants artists Willoughby Sharp, Helen Valentin, Bernd Naber, Franco Ciarlo, Donald Sheridan, Peter Grass, Lynne Kanter, Souyun Yi, Carol Drury, Amy Paskin, Christian Chiansa, Patrizia Anichini, and myseld, ate a Campbell soup. Only Joan Waltmath refused to eat it.
After, they answered to a questionnaire for my NYU Ph.D. phenomenological inquiry: - Do you think it is possible that you have eaten Andy Warhol when before you have eaten that Campbell soup two minutes ago?
- Suspend your belief before to answer to these questions. Answer: yes or no?
- What you mean?
- How do you know?
- How was the taste?
- Is it true or not?
- Who was the subject? Who was the object?
- Description of the experience
From the answers to the questionnaires, it resulted that the majority of participants believed they “ate” Andy Warhol dematerialized.
Few nights after, 22 February, Andy Warhol died.!
At the opening of the Dematerialization of Art symposium at New York University, Lenny Horowitz and Stephen Di Lauro, two Plexus historical players, by reporting from the floor the Sandro's performance, questioned about the potential dematerialization of Andy Warhol.
Nam June Paik, among the speakers, believed possible that Andy Warhol had been dematerialized through the intentional act of eating his commodity art symbol.The ICASA speakers were Jean Baudrillard, Donald Kuspit, Vito Acconci, Nam June Paik, Judy Barry, Dennis Oppenheim, Billy Kluver, Nancy Holt, Paul Taylor, Bruce Breland, Flor Bex, Rene Berger, Eika Billeter, Alan Bowness, Julie Lawson, Hervè Fischer and George Chaikin.
Hadamard Matrix Why it is Art by George Chaikin,
The Dematerialization of Art Symposium, ICASA International Advanced Studies in Art, New York University 1987
I’ve been asked to tell you why it’s art. I’d like to say it’s art because I made it to be art, and leave it at that, but while that appeals to my ego, it doesn’t respond to your genuine inquiry. Obviously, in some sense, it has failed as a work of art since it has not made its qualities self-evident. I do not wish it to be obvious, but I certainly do not wish it to be obscurantist. I wish to invite, even demand, examination, and that it reveals itself as examination proceeds, that this revelation be open ended, that it yield up more and more as examination grows deeper. I’ve said it failed in some respects, but it has also succeeded. For me, it continues to hold fascination, to reveal new sides of itself.
It’s art because it’s a drawing of an idea. The bimodality of the diagonals represents an effort to express the underlying duality of the elements in a form which gives equal weight to each mode. Other attempts using black and white, horizontal and vertical, plus and minus, or zero and one, failed in this respect. While this represents the best realization to date. I’m still working on new possibilities. I find these diagonals too dry, too ascetic. (This is not typical of my drawings, which are usually rich in curves.) I’d like to find a curvilinear realization which suitably expresses the idea.
It’s art because it’s magic. It has a secret name, the knowledge of which gives the possessor exalted powers, power over nature. Its secret name is its algorithm, which reveals itself to be careful observer. Therefore…
It’s art because it knows its own name.. Since it knows its own name, it possesses magical powers, specifically the power of self-replication. This means it may even come close to being alive.
It’s art because it is recursive. I’ll bet you never heard this one before, but I’m sure you’ve encountered the concept. It means that drawing contains its own reiteration at a different scale – this is fundamental to its algorithm – that it is defined in terms of itself on a different scale.
It’s art because it’s reflective. Reflection is an extremely powerful action. Reflect upon it. The recursive algorithm involves three identical copies and one inversion. Both of these are reflective operations.
It’s art because I give it away. I give it away because it is anidea, because yjay’s function of art, ti give ideas. The versions I have giving away so far been too sparse, too thin. I hope soon to do of these drawings containing more that one million lines, to make a million copies of it and give them away. That’s a trillion lines.
It’s art because it was done in memory of Ralston Farina
After, in New York, on February 20 of 1988, on the occasion of the first anniversary of my 1987 dematerialization performance of eating Andy Warhol, I organized in the dried swimming pool of CUANDO Cultural Civic Center, in the Lower East Side, the Plexus happening “An Art Redefinition of a Campbell Soup Can”. I made it as a Plexus report to the Lower East Side community, about developments of the Plexus journey of the art slaves boat, two years after its departure from the “Eve” art opera, its landing in 1987 in Sardinia and its planned arrival at the House of the Slaves of Goree, Dakar, in December 1988.
I staged it inside the dry swimming pool in the basement of C.U.A.N.D.O. a historical group shot to be recorded for Plexus art history My Andy Warhol ’s Dematerilaized Plexus recalling event was this time inspired by a second ICASA symposium, The Redefinition of Art in the Collision of Cultures in the Post-Modern World, held in the same period at New York University by ICASA..
PLEXUS ART REDEFINITION OF A CAMPBELL SOUP CAN
In September 1988, for my birthday,with a party in a loft in Soho, I presented 100 Plexus Campboll's Soups Cans Labels, Made in the 80's for the 90's, as 100 Limited Editions, printed for me by Ram Studio of Maggie Reilly.
What does a PLEXUS Can look like?
It looks like an Andy Warhol's Campbell soup can, if it is exposed to a beholder of the artworld. Its label is red and white. The "e" of Campbell is changed to an "o" in Campboll's, It has a central circle with the words "Dematerialized Andy Warhol" and Andy Warhol's face which hold the center of attention. On its bottom the word PLEXUS.
It has a cylindrical form, balanced symmetrical design, a spatial organization with 2 red and white rectangular units, with written messages: "Directions: Eating Art", "Ingredients: History of Modem Art. Volume One: FoodArt International".
“DIRECTIONS: EATING ART and "INGREDIENTS : HISTORY OF MODERN ART, VOLUME 1- FOODART INTERNATIONAL".
In the Direction bottom side: Time Capsules Art. LTD 100 of 100. PLEXUS 23S Soup Sardinia Export. Printed in the USA
In the Ingredients botton side: Ram Studio Inc - Designer R. Kern. New York, 5/88 AD.
The expectation as manipulation of mental imagery is a central referential step of the analysis. Changing "e" to "o" in the word Campboll’s prevents the Plexus Can being confused with a Warhol's can and with a simple Campbell’s can.
Both light and distance influence the reading of the outside codes of the object whether it is read as "e" or "o", whether you see or you do not see the glued-on penny painted as money art. The angle from which the object is viewed determines the perception of the object either as an original artwork by Plexus23s, or by Andy Warhol or a simple Campbell can.
What is inside this can is also an element of ambiguity of the work under study. How will you open it? The curiosity to open it, and the motivation to do it, will create the need of opener, as a method of reading, a system of intelligibility.
What does a Plexus Campboll’s Soup Can contain?
It changes from can to can. It depends upon the related circumstances under which a Plexus Can is made. What is inside this can is also an element of ambiguity of this art work.
How will you open it? The curiosity to open it, and the motivation to do it, will create the need to invent the opener, a method of reading, a system of intelligibility.The expectation, the beholder's share, if the person is related to the art world, will transform an ordinary object, a Campbell Soup Can, into an artistic object, a PLEXUS Campboll’s Soup Can. Plexus Can as an open work of art depends upon its community of beholders, formed by the momentum of the rhythm of that specific experience and of its correlations
The beholder's projection completes the missing steps, as an artistic interplay between what can be conceived and what is perceivable and observable: a Plexus CampBoll's Soup Can work of art with Andy Warhol dematerialized, an aesthetic illusion created by the power of art suggestion to our mental set.
Interpretations of clues are made by systems of intelligibility which are made by codes. Clues are supposed to be read as information. One of these clues is "Direction: -Eating Art". Another one is "Dematerialized Andy Warhol".
First question, how do we eat art, and if we eat art how do we digest it? Second question, how do we eat Andy Warhol dematerialized, and if we eat Andy Warhol how do we will digest him dematerialized?
The Plexus Can, within its art altalr environment, is a "bewildering image" of a work of contemporary art. The expectation, the beholder's share was the keyplayer in the Plexus artistic process by transforming ordinary materials into artistic ingredients of a PLEXUS Campboll's Soup Can artwork.
Plexus Can functions within a ritual art performance environment depending upon the community of beholders, and their art references. Its interpretation is not static. It is formed by the momentum of the rhythm of our experience and of its correlations. Each reader has his/her own angle of interpretation depending upon his/her personality, education, and culture. No method can transcend the interpreter's own historicity.
The virtual space of a Plexus Can is a semblance of an artists place, a PLEXUS place, dissociated from the mundane art world environment.
To manage my challenge to fill the 100 Plexus Can Limited Editions and to define how and with what to fill them, I applied again my phenomenological approach of my PhD. reflective and refractive to identify the “Directions” and "Ingredients" for eating a Plexus Campboll’s Soup Can that contains also my studies as a Ph.D art education student at the New York University.
Therefore, to start to fill my 100 Plexus Campboll's Soup Cans Limited Editions I applied my studies as NYU PhD. art student.
I started with my first 1986 NYU course on Phenomelogy in the Art by Prof. David W. Ecker for which I did the aesthetic inquiry on Eating Andy Warhol. Then I used my class paper "Named it as Artslaver-ISMS" that I wrote for my 1988 NYU Course on Aethetic Inquiry, again by prof. David W. Ecker. I studied art definitions, categories, styles, artworld and its priviledge of conferring the status to be an "Artist".
ART DEFINITIONS, CATEGORIES, AND ART MARKET:
NAMED IT "ART-SLAVER-ISM"
Plexus Can is an interplay "between expectation and observation", able to set up its own style by creating an innovative and eclectic horizon of expectation.
Danto in his essay on “The Artworld” wrote “To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.
Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes, Danto explained, because they were made by a person with an "artistic identification" belonging to an artworld, made them "Art".An artifact can acquire the status of a candidate for appreciation within the system that Danto has framed and explained. For instance, Duchamp's "Fountain" is not
just a misplaced urinal, as Arthur Danto wrote " Once one accepts the possibility that a Brillo box by Warhol is a work of art, while an ordinary Brillo box is not, it is plain that the differences are not of a kind that meet the eye, and that the phenomenology of perception cannot be appealed to effect the differences, which are philosophical. The point is that Warhol's box acquires, in virtue of'being art, properties ontologically unavailable to its counterpart, and the problem of the philosophy of art is to explain not just how this is possible, but what the status of these properties is, in as much as the properties would not be present to the eye if you did not know you were looking at a work of art "
As result from this deconstruction a large quantity of images and texts it was produced which may seem disconnected but instead very interconnected as frames of references of other references, direct verbal and pictorial quotations to be accounted in a proper interpretation (Then a photograph may actually contain a duplicate of a second photograph; and the first, if it also refers to the second through showing it as in a frame, etc., might then be said to quote it directly
The reading of a Plexus Can raises the problem of measuring an object /subject that is still evolving in non-linear movement and is not in equilibrium.
The interpretation of its pictorial representation has gradually shifted from the object to the subject. What is seen depends upon who is looking at it.
The necessity to create or to invent a new object or substance and related system of intelligibility depends on the momentum of that specific epoch. Just as there was a need to invent a food with a long shelf life. Plexus Can was invented as an original work of art, an attempt at art with a long shelf life.
The Plexus Campboll’s label is only an original dress, is used, as Walter Benjamin argued in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility. to be confronted by the beholder in particular circumstances of time and place. To view a whole Plexus Can out of its intended context is to see it distorted. It is an original work of art that is not possible to experience in another time and place as it was intended to be experienced.
The Plexus Art Slavery Manifesto Group Photo Shots compressionist process actually contains duplicates of other group photos, which contain duplicate of other photos of Plexus historical art journey and so on more; The first frame also refers to the second frame through showing it as in a frame, etc., might then be said to quote it directly.
As result from this deconstruction a large quantity of images and texts was produced which may seem disconnected but instead very interconnected as frames of references of other references, direct verbal and pictorial quotations to be accounted in a proper interpretation (Then a photograph may actually contain a duplicate of a second photograph; and the first, if it also refers to the second through showing it as in a frame, etc., might then be said to quote it directly).
The 1988 Artlasvery Group Shot Manifesto Roma, Metateatro became also a fractal
The reading of a Plexus Can raises the problem of measuring an object /subject that is still evolving in non-linear movement and is not in equilibrium, made by frames of frames of Plexus art references, like a Plexus fractal.
With a message to be coded and decoded in an endless process of description. As a serpent eating its own tail, A Plexus Can is transforming itself in the process.
The Plexus group photo compressionist process actually contains duplicates of other group photos, which contain duplicate of other photos of Plexus historical art journey and so o
SHIFTING Who is now the subject?
and who is now the object?
The interpretation of its pictorial representation has gradually shifted from the object to the subject. What is seen depends upon who is looking at it.
To look at my Plexus can I applied lessons from my 1988 NYU Literature and the Arts course, in which the Alain's drowing came out as my main frame of reference to understand and to learn on how art was tought in the art schools to be studied and applied by future artists and art professionals.
Each analysis of an art work has its own historical world related to a particular time and space.
My Plexus Campboll’s Soup Can label is only an original dress, as Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility, to be perceive by the beholder, in particular circumstances of time and place. To view a whole Plexus Can out of its intended context is to see it distorted. It is an original work of art that is not possible to experience in another time and place as it was intended to be experienced.
A opener, a method of reading, a system of intelligibility is necessary to be identified for reading, eating and digesting a Plexus Campboll's Soup Can.
As result from my deconstruction a large quantity of images and texts was produced which may seem disconnected but instead very interconnected as frames of references of other references, direct verbal and pictorial quotations to be accounted in a proper interpretation.
My Plexus Can is a metaphoric art object, a message to be coded and decoded in an endless process of description and deconstruction. The metaphoric reading of my Plexus Can is "a serpent eating its own tail" A Plexus Can transforms itself in the process. I concdeived my 100 Plexus Campboll's Soup Cans Limited Editions as an original intentional attempt of contemporary art, with a long shelf life.
THE NUMBER ZERO of the 100 PLEXUS CAMPBOLL'S SOUP CANS LIMITED EDITIONS
From 1988 to 2024, I created several art installations with 100 original Campbell's Soup Cans on which I changed their labels with my 100 Plexus Campboll's Soup Cans. Pyramids, reppresenting the ART STARS MARKET SYSTEM and Nuragic Towers, repprenting the Art Communities, I labelled the 100 Plexus cans as 100 Plexus23s Limited Editions.
From 1988 to 2024, I tried many times to understand how to fill these 100 Plexus Cans, but it was too much for me, by being too much involved into it.
Then in 2025, for Art Love, I placed myself inside a number zero of a Plexus Can, watching myself as a vivisected body of art, subject and object at the same time.
After 37 years, since when in 1988 I conceived the 100 Plexus labels,
I placed myself inside of the number zero of my 100 Plexus Camboll's Soup Cans Limited Editions, only by Art Love, as a birthday homage, for Glaucia Coelho DemenjourIn the number zero for Glaucia Coelho Demenjour.
MI DENTRO/MI FUORI - MYSELF INSIDER/MYSELF OUTSIDER
I was forced by ARTLOVE to define how to fill these Plexus cans by taking into account the history from where they were coming from, in which I was part, in the first person, as an insider as well as an outsider.
DIRECTIONS-EATING ART:
EATING THE HISTORY OF PLEXUS ART JOURNEY 1982-2024
INGREDIENTS:
THE HISTORY OF MODERN ART
Volume 1
PHD NEW YORK UNIVERSITY AESTETIC INQUIRY INTO THE PLEXUS BLACK BOX BY SANDRO DERNINI
Inside the can, on the bottom, a 1981 original photo of Sandro
TIME CAPSULE NUMBER ZERO:
1981 WHEN SANDRO DERNINI LANDED IN NEW YORK CITY,
When I moved to New York, living in a loft in Broome Street, in Soho, I started to give great parties to meet people to start to know the cultural and artist life in New York. Then, I conceived the creation of the NYU Center for Italian Contemporary Culture, and, as executive director, I organized the programme "THE ARTIST IN THE FIRST PERSON", with artists organizing and producing their own presentations.
On the internal side of the Can I glued a cent coin painted in yellow as money art, glued next to the cover of the 1987 Dematerialization of Art Symposium at New York University,. Next to them I glued a collage of a middle ages vivisected body of an alive prisoner opened by the medical school, with different faces of myself watching the opening.
The number zero of the Plexus Campboll's Soup Cans Limited Editions I packaged inside a wicker basket handmade by Fabrizio Perini, the basket maker of Sorano, Tuscany Maremma, where it is now located Plexus International Archives.
The Plexus Archives in Sorano meticulously documents the events and activities of Plexus Internaional, from 1982 to 2024 and up now, with a collection of original papers by Plexus artists and historical artworks, such as the Plexus Metr'Art, a monumental contemporary artwork measuring 390.94 meters, created from 2004 to 2019, including 935 contributions from 469 artists worldwide.
Plexus International Official Archives can be visited by appointment and overnight stay on site, at special discount fare, at the DJOUR'S Guest House of Glaucia Coelho Demenjour.
I am still facing the challenge in progress of filling the 100 Plexus Plexus Campboll's Soup Cans Limited Editions. The Voyage continues...
IN ORDER TO SURVIVE
PLEXUS VOYAGE CONTINUES
Plexus International Archives Gallery has moved from Rome to Sorano, Maremma Tuscany, Italy, at the legal office the Plexus International Forum A.P.S.E.T.S., via Giovanni Pascoli 6 (GR), 58010.
The Archives meticulously document the events and activities of Plexus Internaional, from 1982 to 2024, with a collection of original papers by Plexus artists and historical artworks, such as the Plexus Metr'Art, a monumental contemporary artwork measuring 390.94 meters, created from 2004 to 2019, including 935 contributions from 469 artists worldwide. The digital archive hosts a large collation of photographs and more than 170 videos, many of them posted on Plexus's YouTube channel. The complete list of Plexus events of Plexus International is reported chronologically on www.plexusinternational.org.
Plexus original documents can be consulted by appointment by email: info@plexusinternational.org. Possibility of overnight stay on site, at the DJOUR'S Guest House, upon reservation.
Plexus International Archives si è trasferito da Roma a Sorano, nella Maremma Toscana, presso la sede legale dell'associazione Plexus International Forum A.P.S. E.T.S. , via Giovanni Pascoli 6, Sorano (GR), 58010
Plexus documenti sono consultabili previo appuntamento per email: info@plexusinternational.org. Possibilità di pernottamento in sede, presso la Djour's Guest House, su prenotazione.
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