Robert Filliou | Eins, Un, One

Robert Filliou

Eins, Un, One

Cologne, Germany: Edition Hundertmark, c1984

3 x 3 x 3 cm.

Edition of 100 [+ 50 AP] signed copies

An over-sized wooden die in which all sides display 'one'. Filliou's initials appear on a small sticker on one of the sides.

The work was originally issued as part of the Armin Hundertmark Karton 100 [above, centre], a boxed work contained forty-four works by different artists, including Monika Bartholomé, Claus Böhmler, Günther Brüs, Henri Chopin, Philip Corner, Robert Filliou, Jochen Gerz, Ludwig Gosewitz, Al Hansen, Anatol Herzfeld, Bernard Heidsieck, Joe Jones, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Arthur Köpcke, Te Tsumi Kudo, Maria Lassnig, George Maciunas, Mario Merz, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, Paul Sharits, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Endre Tot, Jiri Valoch, Ben Vautier, Stefan Wewerka, Emmett Williams and others. Most of the contributions are flat graphics, with the exception of five works, including Eric Andersen’s lighter [here]. 

Filliou would later exhibit installations involving thousands of similar dice, in a variety of colours and sizes. 

See also Dan Graham’s 1991 work One, below. 

"This work first appeared in 1984 and has been displayed in several 21st-century exhibitions, including Robert Filliou’s first solo exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds in 2013. The constellation of 16,000 multicolored dice, each with all six sides bearing a single dot, delivers one of the more humorous works of homage to Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard. With the guarantee of a single dot, it might be thought that chance has been abolished, whichever and however many dice are rolled. The multiple sizes and colors of the dice and the varied constellations into which they might fall per installation suggest otherwise.

Just a thought.

As Mallarmé’s last line — Toute Pensé émet un Coup de Dés — implies, even this thought emits a throw of the dice.”

- Robert Bolick