Di-stanza, 2000
GPO-0843
Di-stance
Painted wood, plexiglas case with passepartout, music stand, fragments of torn drawing paper, collage and pencil on wall
Wooden part 300 x 200 cm (internal measurements), overall dimensions 320 x 240 x 100 cm
Gian Enzo Sperone Collection
The colour of the painted wooden door-frame must correspond to the colour of the wall: for instance, if the wall is red, then the door-frame must be painted red.
The wooden doorframe placed up against the wall opens onto two rooms in a row, evoked by the drawing on the wall (the passage between the two virtual spaces is marked by a door-frame that is exactly the same as the one placed up against the wall). At the back of the row of rooms, corresponding to the vanishing point of the perspective – but in the foreground with respect to the actual wall – is a plexiglas case with a passepartout, which is also aligned with the two “paintings” in the first room. The cut-out of the passepartout allows us to see several fragments of torn drawing paper on the wall. Other torn fragments are scattered about on the floor and on the music stand, located in front of the wall.
The discrepancy, both material and conceptual, between the drawn space and the physical space on this side of that inaccessible “room” is emphasized in the title itself, especially by the hyphen that divides it into two parts: at the threshold to the “door” we are asked to measure the distance (and keep our distance) from that reserved dimension that exclusively belongs to the work and that indeed keeps us at a distance.
The same theme was developed in two other variants in the same year (GPO-0844, GPO-0845).
| 2000 | Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Giulio Paolini. Di-stanza, 29 March - 13 May. |
| 2010 | London, Robilant + Voena, “The Gallant Apparel”. Italian Art and the Modern, 27 September - 27 October, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 63, col. repr. p. 51 (exhibition view Paris 2000), entry by M. Meneguzzo p. 50. |
