Retroscena, 2017-21

The reversed canvas, set up at the centre of a larger primed canvas, reveals the drawing of a room in perspective. Applied to the area corresponding to the rear wall of this room is a white rectangle, from which torn fragments of the reproduction of a sky at dusk fall freely towards the lower part of the work. The vanishing points of the drawing are prolonged in the diagonals in red pencil corresponding to the four corners of the primed canvas.
Although the work seems to offer to our gaze the recto and the verso (or the “backstage” indicated in the title) of a presumed painting – “exhibited” in the virtual room – our gaze is unable to capture anything definite. The image that we believe we are capturing is broken up and dissolved before our very eyes.
The work underwent two phases of development, as indicated by the date. During the first phase, in 2017, the reversed canvas was installed directly on the wall that hosted the outline of a rectangle, whose diagonals were lightly drawn, and several rectangles falling freely as though they were emerging from the overturned canvas. After giving it some thought, in 2021 the artist reformulated the work, by replacing the drawing on the wall with a primed canvas.