Piazza d’Italia (II), 2001

A precariously balanced stretcher is associated with a fallen Thonet chair and several sheets scattered randomly on the floor. In the central area, a pencil drawing traces on the sheets the outline of a rectangle corresponding in size to one section of the stretcher. The sheets bear the fragments of a torn image of writings by the artist.1
The elements at play allude to a painting, which instead of being composed in the author-viewer’s gaze – symbolically evoked by way of the chair –, comes apart before our eyes, leaving in view only a few precarious clues: the drawn rectangle, the fragments of writings, the scattered sheets.
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 of the same name, 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.

1 The fragments are taken from a black-and-white reproduction of the lithograph Giro di boa (1998), made by Paolini for his volume of writings with the same title. In it a male figure sits with his head in his hands on a platform, adrift in the open sea, while floating all around him are the torn fragments of autograph writings.