Monologo, 1996

The framed photograph reproducing a print of the vertical cross-section of a theatre is held by a figure wearing coat-tails drawn on the wall (the drawing of the figure's hands continues onto the passepartout of the framed image). The central part of the print, corresponding to the opening of the stage and, in relation to the drawing on the wall, to the figure's face, is cut out, allowing the viewer to glimpse the corner of a sheet of drawing paper applied to the wall. Five more blank sheets are scattered across the wall and fall freely around the figure (in the points of contact, the profile of the body continues onto the sheets).
The solitary figure peering through the cross-section of the theatre, half-hidden by the image it holds before itself, is part of the family of counterfigures wearing ceremonial clothing or a costume that interpret the "monologue" by the artist absorbed in imagining "his" painting. Actors or anonymous and detached bearers, they limit themselves to offering the viewer the gaze itself oriented towards the space of the representation (cf. among others Delfo (III), 1977, GPO-0372; De pictura, 1979, GPO-0417; Scene di conversazione, 1980, GPO-0423; Incognita, 1980, GPO-0438).