Platea, 1982-84

The six picture frames with black and white photographs of the actors in the play Platea, made by the artist in 1982 in collaboration with Carlo Quartucci – Penelope, Laertes, Anticlea, Telemachus, Eumaeus and Antinous – are arranged in a circle so that they are staggered, forming a close-knit "audience area" around the central scene. The characters whose names, specifically the first letter in each name, create the title “Platea”, are, in this order: Penelope, Laertes, Anticlea, Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Antinous.1 The colour photomontage placed under the picture frames and half-hidden from view features David Allan's allegory of the origin of painting, The Origin of Painting (The Maid of Corinth) (1775),2 inserted into the background of a backstage animated by several stagehands at work.
The audience made up of Homeric figures waiting for the performance, the image of the backstage of the theatre while all the stage equipment is being prepared, the origin of painting as the moment that precedes the painting and the history of painting: everything converges in the anterior condition of the actual representation, in the wait for the beginning.

1 The six photos were taken by Nanda Lanfranco during the first performance of Platea at the Castello di Colonna in Genazzano on 22 May 1982. The characters were played by Carla Tatò (Penelope), Roberto Lerici (Laertes), Joan Jonas (Anticlea), Yves Olliviers (Telemachus), Antonino Manganaro (Eumaeus), and Lawrence Weiner (Antinous).
2 David Allan’s painting represents the origin of painting according to the legend of Pliny the Elder, with a young woman busy trying to fasten the shadow of her departing lover to the wall. The image also appears in the print edition entitled Idea del Tempio della pittura, 1983 (GPE-0044) and in the artist's project published in 1981 in the magazine A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu (cf. in the comment to no. GPO-0463).