About the Work
Is this a destroyed canvas? The Italian artist has made holes in the monochrome white surface, some of them thick, some thin. They are arranged around a centre in curving lines converging on a point. This violent artistic intervention, the piercing of the surface of the canvas, should not be misunderstood as a destructive act. Fontana's aim is always the extension of the space. Through the holes the light can reach the other side of the canvas. Fontana opens up the picture surface without using the illusionist design medium of painting, and calls the works produced in this way 'spatial concepts'. With these holes, he breaks through not only the dimension of the picture support, but also through the traditional definition of a picture as a window on the world, as it has been handed down by art-historical tradition since the Renaissance.
