Dix 10 : Truth Is No Stranger To Fiction – and Vice Versa
By Bart Platenga

The conceptual art group Dix 10 – comprised of the artists Roma Napoli and JJ Dow Jones – began its rise to considerable renown in Paris in 1982, a time during which painting was once again beginning to attract the public's attention.

In the 1980s, in cities like Rome, Berlin, New York, and Paris, young artists rediscovered painting as a valid emotional and strategic response to the art world they were immersed in. These artists established studios in, among other places, New York's East Village, Berlin's Kreutzberg, and the Bastille in Paris.

Roma Napoli and Dow Jones in their Bastille studio emerged out of this dynamism by creating not only unique pictoral experiments but by confronting the many issues of how art objects are conceived, viewed and purchased ; in effect, they were examining the relationship between art producer, art product, and art consumer. They quickly became known as the Group Dix 10 [pronounced dees-dees] referring to 10/10, or a 10 out of 10 score that is usually awarded to a perfect performance.

To wander into one of their installations meant entering the work the way Jonah entered the whale's stomach - you are immediately astonished by its copious attention to detail, by its engagement of the chosen theme, by how you are compelled to reassess how you look at art. And so, any visitor to a Dix 10 exhibition can become a guide or instructor by merely purchasing a Dix 10 artwork and passing its concept along to others.

Over the past two decades, and now on into the 21st century, Dix 10 has developed an immense lexicon as applied to the object, the written subject, and the 10/10 signature. This lexicon constitutes the essential source for this non-conformist group's language, which assumes the same varied guises and strategies as their large and varied selection of thematic exhibitions.