Come non detto, 2006

A blue jewellery box, set atop a crumpled sheet of drawing paper, is held open by a black pencil, which also secures several sheets. Two acetate sheets, respectively, reproduce the drawing of a modular structure, based on the multiplication of Disegno geometrico, 1960 (GPO-0001),1 and the profile of the artist’s face, in a reflecting mood, associated with a pile of sheets of drawing paper.2 The sheets are arranged so that the pencil pierces the centre of the modular structure and the left eye.
Extending from the pile of blank sheets, reproduced in the portrait, to the crumpled sheet – a failed attempt, already consumed – is the path towards the ideal work (recalled in Disegno geometrico) which the author attempts to always catch sight of from one work to another, without however managing to see it thoroughly. The secret (or the mystery) of the unknown work remains suspended in the half-open jewelry box, amplifying the silence of the “wordless scene”, as suggested by the title.
The work is part of a series of three works, made in 1989 (GPO-0638), 1990 (GPO-0663), and 1994 (GPO-0726).

1 The drawing presides over the structure consisting of metal pipes made in 1992 for the installation of the solo shows at the Christian Stein, Milan, and Yvon Lambert, Paris, galleries, and reused in 1999 for the presentation of the work Padiglione dell’Aurora (GPO-0832) at the Teatro del Castello di Rivoli, as well as in 2014 for the work In esilio (GPO-1039).
2 The motif is taken from the lithograph made in 1989 for a series of works on paper entitled Senza titolo (Ni le soleil ni la mort...) (cf. from GPC-0752 to GPC-0759), where the profile of the face – after a portrait made by the photographer Gérard Amsellem in 1983 – is outlined so that it overlaps the image of several sheets in a pile and is accompanied by a drawing pin, placed so that it corresponds to the pupil of the left eye, and seems to hold down the first sheet in the pile.