Belvedere, 1996

At the centre of a black plinth, a crystal ball with a slit in the middle holds a printed image reproducing a blower of bubbles, associated with a sphere of planets (the young man is borrowed from the painting Les bulles de savon, ca. 1734 by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin). Three white circles, applied to both the recto and the verso of the image and partially projecting out, complete the game of spheres. Underneath the crystal ball, an astral collage on black paper held down by a plexiglas sheet further multiplies the bubble-balls "blown" by the young man. Orbiting in the midst of the planets as well are two circular shapes taken from the photographic reproduction of monuments in Sabbioneta (the place where the work was exhibited for the first time).
This work is part of a group of works with the same title, made starting in 1990, whose common denominator is a figure located in either an elevated or a central position – in a "belvedere", as the title suggests – and correlated with one or more astral spheres, understood to be the symbolic model of incomparable perfection (cf. GPO-665, GPO-0666, GPO-0667, GPO-0679, GPO-0698, GPO-0700, GPO-0714, GPO-0715, GPO-0776).