Dilemma, 1995

Placed on a plinth in the middle of the room is a plaster pedestal on top of which is a plexiglas case with a primed canvas inside. On the floor, leaning up against the plinth, is a plaster frame of the same format as the canvas. Applied to one of the four sides of the pedestal much like a tombstone is a canvas with the drawing of twenty-five modular units arranged in a grid made up of 5 x 5 squares. On the walls twenty-three canvases hung to show either the verso or the recto, alternated irregularly with empty spaces and pencil-drawn squares, delineate a virtual grid.
Between the sculptural situation of the superimposed volumes and the distribution of the canvases on the wall, the “dilemma” mentioned in the title calls into play a whole series of relationships and correspondences. For instance, between the grid drawn on the canvas, which acts as the abstract or “theoretical” index, and the composite grid developing along the wall with four different modular units (canvases viewed from the back or from the front, empty spaces, pencil-drawn squares), or else between the canvas isolated in the plexiglas case and the units scattered about on the walls, or between the canvas up above and the frame placed on the floor. In this sense, the canvas called into question as a material object on the one hand, and as a two-dimensional support on the other, renews the “dilemma” that serves as a common thread with respect to two earlier works with the same title, made in 1989 and in 1993 (GPO-0639 and GPO-0720), respectively.