Abat-jour, 1996

A primed canvas is placed on top of a globe, located at the centre of a plexiglas sheet that holds down a collage on paper with two photographic circles, so that the larger of the two is tangent to the globe. The two images reproduce details of the frescoed ceilings of Palazzo del Giardino in Sabbioneta (the site of the first exhibition of the work): one of them reproduces a frescoed dome, the other the winged figure of Daedalus. The two circles are contained inside a drawing of straight lines: the diagonals square the sheet, while the other two intersect in the winged figure's gaze. A copy of the same drawing is crumpled up on top of the canvas.
The blank canvas touching the globe – the world seen as all the objects possible, that is, a simulacrum of Everything – screens the results of the contact in the manner of an abat-jour, as indicated by the title. While the globe and the complementary circles recall the astral system as the image of ideal perfection – a symbolic reference in the artist's imaginary –, the ancient figure of Daedalus, linked to the myth of the fall of Icarus, alludes in a broad sense to the artist's desire to make an absolute vision his own. An impossible desire evoked through the upside-down canvas, the crumpled up sheet, and the drawing of straight lines.
The work is a variant in a smaller format of the two previous versions of Abat-jour, made in 1986 (GPO-0567) and in 1987 (GPO-0614), respectively.