The "Substitute", the "Gestureplace" double, or rather the studio double, consisting of photo reproductions and painted surfaces that change continuously because I always paint a new colour. The space that gives the possibility of taking the gesture out of the private space and of perpetuating it uninterruptedly. A way to show the process that is only usually maintained as a hidden or private act, highlighting the transformation of the work over time.
The “Gestureplace” is the point in the studio where the painting space has been delineated over the years, where I stratify and leave traces of a colour day after day. The place that carries within it the potential for the gesture to be continually reiterated.
The "Gestureplace double", or rather the studio double, the “Substitute”, consisting of photo reproductions and painted surfaces that change continuously because I always paint a new colour. The space that offers the possibility of taking the gesture out of the private space and of perpetuating it uninterruptedly. A means of showing the process that is only usually performed as a hidden or private act, highlighting the transformation of the work over time.
How can I take my intimacy outside? How can I unleash my own interiority in the world when connecting the interior with the exterior? How can I keep the meaning of a crystallised work whole if what I am doing can be described only by words such as precarious and transitory? How do I not trap within a definitive image something that due to its nature keeps moving forward thanks to a perpetual provisional movement? How do I emphasise the gesture in relation to the pictorial object? How do I make people understand that the thing I give most importance to is the work’s development rather than following a definitive form?
I wanted to drag the process that had been precisely defined over time out of the studio: every day, regularly, I make a colour in the "Bowl". When it is ready, I spread it on the surfaces: on the "Diary", on the "Infinite Painting" and sometimes on a "Sedimentation". All of the pictorial substance that is slowly formed over the years is contained inside the "Archivers".
I envisaged a work-summary of what I do that is the result of an evocation and a doubling of the "Gestureplace", the central nucleus where my pictorial action takes place every day. I called it "Substitute" and it contains the elements that make up my universe.
I created a double of the "Bowl" in order to continue generating colour inside this system. I included the photo reproductions of the "Archivers": the "Sedimentary", the "Infinite Painting", the "Diary-theque" and "Dad’s Diary House" – the structures that conserve all of the material that has formed during the course of existence. Finally, I added the Imprints: the elastic concrete "Floor", the photo of the back of the "Sedimentary" and the one of the "Imprint Diaries" – the surfaces on which the painting takes place every day.
Inside it, it is possible to see the colour continually change through the stratification of the paint on the "Stand-In" (the Infinite Painting double), on the "Double" (the Diary double) and on the "Sedimentation", which are physically present in the space and hung directly on the photos of their imprints.
The "Substitute" is the movement of the studio from one point to another, from the contained, intimate and private space towards an exterior that can accommodate it.
It is the shifting of the gesture (which is usually performed in an isolated place and reactivated here) to a public, unprotected place. (Stretching the interpretation a little, perhaps we could also say that it is a means of going from misanthropy to encountering the world that lies outside me.)
A little like in a depiction of the scenic space, the action takes place in a sort of small arena. I go back to performing my usual action: spreading colour on the surface, leaving a trace of my gesture.
All of these elements are a little like one of those stages used by travelling theatres which are set up over and over again in a different town square to reactivate the ritual.
A theatre with no audience. I am not really interested in the performative aspect or in exhibiting the action before an audience, but I am interested in making the public witness a continuous transformation in action. Human presence is evoked through the change in the work.
The "Substitute" is the translated space where the movement of my hand (which must never be interrupted) is reactivated; an action that has always existed, at any cost and which must be protracted; an action which has already happened and which has to be reactivated ceaselessly at any time. A permanent gesture that you have to have faith in for it to have a chance of being procrastinated infinitely, even beyond my individual life.
A moment captured in time by a photograph is reactivated through the concrete objects of the painting which continually change. It is a way of changing the memory, of reactivating the memory and revitalising a captured time in the image of oneself. It is also the regeneration of a suspended time that identifies the possibility of moving forward, further. It is something that happened in the past, which is happening now in the present and which can always be perpetuated in the future. Everyone becomes a witness to a work that is never definitive but is always in transformation.
This work, like the essence of all my work, is essentially an attempt to represent time.
It could also be added that simultaneity is also considered in this work because the "Substitute" and the "Gestureplace" coexist: when one is not there the other one substitutes it. Substitution gives the possibility of doing and of never suspending the gesture.
The story of the "Substitute" began in Turin at the GAM for the "Diaries between Diaries" project. Since then a series of transformations and clarifications have occurred.
The "Substitute" can be reactivated in different ways each time. Every part can be taken apart and even partially reassembled.
The work takes a different form each time in order to adapt to the places housing it.
If you want to install the "Substitute" in its entirety then it is best for the imprint of the diary, the back of the "Sedimentary" and the "Stand-In" to be hung next to each other on separate walls at a ninety-degree angle.
Everything can be developed on one level, hung on a single wall or it can create a three-dimensional space using the photos as though they were theatre curtains. A closed space can be constructed reproducing the precise dimensions of my studio or can be expanded into a more open, dilated space.
The public can walk on the floor and enter the space or can stay outside and look at it as though it were a detached image.
Audiences can relive the experience in extremely different situations, for example: an artists’ residence, a place of holy worship, a museum, another artist’s studio, a private home, my house…
Sometimes it might be the case that it has to substitute the place of work in my own studio. The "Archivers" might have to travel and so the "Substitute" would remain here to take their place.
Sooner or later I would like to place the "Gestureplace" alongside the "Substitute", the original and its double together.
If the “Substitute” is housed in museums, it will allow me to have a direct comparison with other works, in other words of painting “Sedimentations” in proximity to other paintings, taking inspiration from the colours of their collections. A bit like I did in 2007 for the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, but in this case working directly in situ and not in the studio.
Since the “Gestureplace” was completed in 2020 with the addition of structures that keep it raised off the floor, there has been a substantial discrepancy with the “Substitute” – which remains situated on the ground.
The difference that was created between the “Substitute” and the “Gestureplace” is practically the same as can be seen between street theatre and staged theatre. The “Substitute” remains on the ground among the people while the “Gestureplace” is raised and stands above the people, detached from everything else.
The concept of the public monument is turned on its head.
The monument is usually placed in an open shared space, whereas here when it is the “Gestureplace” it is raised whilst remaining in a closed, private space.
The public monument usually stands both among the people but also placed on a base that keeps it detached. Instead here, when it is the “Substitute” it descends from its pedestal, leaves the studio, places itself at the same height as the people and invites them to walk through its interior.
(Written in 2018)
