Piazza d’Italia (I), 2001

A Thonet chair facing the wall serves as a support surface for a reversed canvas. Held behind the stretcher bars are four blank sheets of paper arranged at different angles, which are extended by the sheets that develop upwards on the wall. The second sheet from the bottom features the image in negative of a life-size hand (the cut-out shape allows the viewer to glimpse the verso of the canvas), while on the last sheet at the top is the image of a flag portraying a patch of sky.
The elements at play allude to a painting, which instead of being composed in the author’s gaze – evoked by way of the chair –, comes apart before our eyes, leaving in view only a few iconographic clues: a hand trying, in vain, to grasp an absolute dimension, represented by the sky, by definition unattainable.
The title pays tribute to a famous series of works from Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical period.
The work is part of a group of three variants with the same title, made between 2001 and 2002 (GPO-0865, GPO-0866, GPO-0872), which are distinguished by a different configuration of the three main elements: the chair, the sheets or the photographic reproductions, the canvas or the stretcher.