Settantasei frammenti di due particolari dell’“Esposizione universale”, 1992-98

The two complementary parts of the work, arranged at the centre of two opposite walls, are each made up of a die-cut passepartout with multiple windows in different sizes, framed against a white or black background. In both elements, the two small central oval windows evoke the shape of two eyes and hold, in one of the openings, the image of one of the artist’s eyes. Some of the windows allow for a glimpse of the squares and rectangles drawn on the black or white background, while arranged in the other openings are a total of seventy-six torn fragments of images: in the passepartout with the light background these are details taken from a portrait of the artist with a drawing pin in one eye, and in the passepartout with a black background these are fragments from the reproductions of previous works. Both of the framed elements, in the area corresponding to the median points, bear four colour reproductions of lit spotlights: in the “daytime” element the images are arranged outside the frame, with the spotlights pointed at the multitude of squares and rectangles drawn in random order on the wall (associated here and there with other fragments of the portrait of the artist), while in the “night-time” element the photographic images are held down in the edge of the frame, so that the spotlights appear to be directed towards the central area.
The two parts of the diptych are related by a close complementary relationship: if the white element is distinguished by a centrifugal “explosion”, the black one is marked by a dizzying centripetal “implosion”. The black/white contrast alludes to the patterns of a chessboard and to the infinite combinations that the artist, always from scratch goes over on his own game table.
The two “details” mentioned in the title define the two framed elements as the details of a project titled Esposizione universale, begun in 1992 but never realized in the form that had been planned for it, in which a conspicuous number of similar elements would form a large mosaic: in a broad sense, the multitude of fragments and windows making up each element represents in itself the idea of the “universal exposition”.