He is one of a number of artists – including the Brazilians Cildo Meireles, Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, and the Chilean Eugenio Dittborn – who were responsible for the development of South American forms of conceptualism and arte povera that addressed social and political concerns through everyday objects and practices.īefore establishing himself as an artist Grippo had studied chemistry, and he carried over into his creative practice an interest in processes of transformation first investigated in the scientific field. This work was created using readymade objects in 1972 in Buenos Aires, where Grippo lived and worked throughout his life.

When exhibited the multimeter is usually set to display voltage (V), rather than current (mA). Similarly, the potato perishes and when the work is exhibited it is usually replaced weekly. Because the zinc slowly dissolves as a result of this process, the electrode needs to be renewed periodically. The battery works through the reciprocally balanced processes of oxidation and reduction occurring at the electrodes: the acidic juices of the potato oxidise the zinc, producing electrons that pass through the wires and multimeter to the copper electrode, where they reduce hydrogen ions to form hydrogen. Because the electrodes on the end of the wires are of different metals – one copper, the other zinc-galvanised iron – the circuit allows the potato to act as a simple battery. It consists of a simple electrical circuit in which an analogue multimeter is connected to a potato by two wires. Energy of a Potato (or Untitled or Energy) is a work by the Argentinian artist Víctor Grippo.

Wire library energia