Incognita, 1979-80

A large canvas features the drawing of the corner of the room where it is installed. Dropping down to the centre of the canvas is a photographic canvas hanging from a nylon thread, which reproduces a view of the exterior side of the room for which the work was made. The perspectival drawing traced on the photograph instead shows an interior view of the same room. At the centre of the photograph, in the area corresponding to the vanishing point of our gaze, a white rectangle made of card stock duplicates the image of the large primed canvas set down on an easel, and at the same time it constitutes the painting that escapes our gaze (the "unknown” evoked in the title). The figure wearing a tail-coat outlined in a central position on the photographic canvas – a stand-in for the author – holds some photographs of the view of the space reproduced on the canvas itself. Lying on the floor, half-hidden under the canvas, is a ceremonial outfit that is half undone, with an artificial white flower inserted in between the clothes.
On this side of the space of representation, the artificer's outfit par excellence – staged here for the first time in its material components (tail-coat and dark trousers, shirt, vest, collar and white tie) – remains an empty container, the only trace of the author leaving the scene, proof of his distance, his non-involvement, and his extraneousness to the becoming of the work.
The work is a reformulation of the first version made in 1979, which no longer exists (GPO-0414).