Teogonia, 1982-24

A print rack serves as a support for a reversed canvas which holds, at the cross brace of the stretcher, a few fragments of images with a cosmic subject,1 illuminated by the spotlight placed close to the print rack.
The title – “theogony” designates the narration of the birth of the gods – alludes symbolically to the mystery of a work yet to come, which the spotlight seems to want to closely explore. A primordial core, almost a sort of Big Bang, that invites us to imagine what the front of the canvas – the face of the painting – could be, still unknown and kept out of our view. Through the emblematic reference to theogony and the supernatural dimension of the universe, the becoming of a work is understood as something unfathomable, which transcends the limits of perception and representation.

1 The main image, an eighteenth-century engraving reproducing Andreas Cellarius' model of planetary orbits, contains three torn details of celestial subjects and one of the globe. Further down are a reproduction of the verso of a painting, echoing the reversed canvas, and two photographic fragments of plaster shards against the backdrop of a shattered sheet of glass (taken from the poster of the solo exhibition at Studio Marconi, Milan, 1984, linked to the iconography of the cycle of works entitled Cythère).