Essere o non essere, 1994-95

The central nucleus of the installation consists of a photographic image reproducing two men seen from above, one of whom is busily drawing on his drawing album, while the other man is watching what is taking shape on the blank surface (the six photographic units are each held down by a plexiglas sheet on a primed canvas of the same format). Lying next to the block of sheets reproduced in the photograph are a sketchbook, and a black pencil. All around, a considerable number of primed canvases – seen from the recto or the verso and partially piled up – make up a grid of modular units. Some of these canvases bear a pencil drawing of linear geometries or of variously arranged squares. Scattered between the units of this “chequerboard” are sheets of drawing paper showing pencil studies of supposed squares (or other sheets). A red felt-tip pen is used to “square off” the entire work along the diagonals so that the point where they intersect coincides with the tip of the pencil in the photographic image.
The title refers to the idea of something being and not being at the same time, something that, starting from the central nucleus, appears and disappears amidst the “places” of the chequerboard. In that continuous construction and deconstruction of the working hypotheses, which peer out and are lost amidst interruptions and mutiplications, the artist’s mental worksite unfolds: on his work table the work in fieri is an ensemble of game pieces that are constantly moving. Along the diagonals turned towards infinity, the conjectures and attempts chase after one another and overlap as they continually expand, landing in traces that are gradually abandoned, to be forever and endlessly renewed from the outset.