Dilemma, 1989

Dilemma involves the vis-à-vis of two paintings made up of nine elements arranged at short intervals. Each painting features the image of a work on display at the centre of a room. In the first painting the subject that stands out against the perspective of the room is the bust of the Hermes of Praxiteles, recalled in a photographic collage.1 In the painting on the opposite wall the work inside a room is the other painting, faithfully reproduced in a pencil drawing and a collage, so that the viewer is offered his own point of view or his vision of that painting in the display space itself.
Between one painting and another, the viewer finds himself in an authentic "dilemma": while the first painting invites him to enter the virtual space of the representation, the second one brings him back to that threshold, reminding him of the distance that separates him from that dimension. The dilemma thus involves him in the first person: to be able to "see", he must "forget" the stage set up, but at the same time his gaze is inexorable from the position where he finds himself looking, on this side of the scene.
The theme, which dates to 1985 – as attested to by Studio per “Dilemma” from the same year (GPC-1709) –, was reformulated in a subsequent variant, made in 1994 (GPO-0842).