Che ora è?, 1998-99

The image in the plexiglas case, cut so that it resembles a passepartout, reproduces the drawing of a room seen from above with twelve squares (or paintings), six of which have been cut out so that parts of the wall can be glimpsed. In the area corresponding to the central space of the case, applied to the wall, is the photostatic reproduction of the drawing of a hand intent on indicating with the tip of a pencil the centre of the wristwatch on the other hand. The watch determines the numbering in a clockwise direction from 1 to 12, written in pencil on the squares of the virtual room or, where the number falls in the area corresponding to a cut-out square, on the blank papers scattered across the wall (their trapezoidal format and the dimensions are in keeping with the rules of the dizzying vision from above).
As the title suggests, the work constitutes a sort of timepiece: “the enigma of the hour” alludes to the search for the instant, which is incommensurably far away, in which the hand intent on drawing manages to touch the miracle of a fulfilled drawing.