Circolo degli artisti, 1999-04

The central frame – contained within a larger frame turned so that it is tilted – features a collage of eight male figures (stand-ins for the artist), arranged in a circle and intent on observing, arranging, or holding before them a painting. The paintings related to each figure correspond to the progression of eight paintings all of which are askew, which from the middle expand until, in their rotatory dynamic, they involve the two black frames as well. (The last painting drawn, cut by the margins of the frame, continues on the wall.) Also developing from the inside to the outside is a chromatic sequence that from the composite assemblage at the centre expands to the circular sequence of eight torn fragments – each of them placed so that they correspond to one of the figures – to then continue with eight crumpled sheets, scattered inside and outside the tilted frame (the crumpled coloured sheets are copies of the same image with the eight figures and the progression of the squares).
Akin to the “circle” of stand-ins where the artist is caught in the search for “his” painting, the pinwheel of squares and colours seem to seek a balancing point where everything converges in a fulfilled painting.