Concetto spaziale, Teatrino

Until he began producing the Teatrini in 1964, abstraction had dominated Fontana's art for the best part of two decades. However, with the Teatrini, Fontana introduced a playful figurative element to his work, cutting protrusions into a box-like frame to depict stylized organic forms that stand out in relief from the canvas it envelopes. The topographic silhouettes created by the lacquered frame act as a foreground against the pierced, matt canvas mid-ground, creating the effect of a multi-layered landscape. In this oncetto spaziale, Teatrino, the notched frame undulates at the lower edge like a sea swell or the shifting mists of a Chinese calligraphic painting. The mysterious organic shapes are set against a canvas punctured methodically through with holes arranged from edge to edge in a continuous line, like a distant horizon. Although the forms add a narrative aspect, the work is nevertheless an embodiment of Fontana's Spatialist ideas, inviting the viewer to contemplate beyond the limitations of foreground shapes, and even the scope of the horizon line, into deep space. Despite the variation in the textural and light reflective qualities of the frame and canvas, the layering of white-on-white tones creates a sense of weightlessness and infinite space. For Fontana, the purity of white was an emblem of the void, an illusion that is made a reality with the holes, or Buchi, that allow actual space to flow through the surface of the canvas.

In many ways, the Teatrini should be seen in the context of Fontana's architectural work, the Ambienti, walk-in works that altered the atmosphere of vast spaces through the use of perforated walls and ceilings. Fontana manipulated space and light in his Teatrini in much the same way as his large-scale environmental interventions and they are to some degree his permanent representation of the complex spatial constructs executed in generally temporary installations. Indeed, the title of these works, meaning 'Little Theatres', contains the idea that they are in themselves miniature 'environments'. Like the proscenium arch of a stage, the frame provides the impression that the work is self-contained, establishing an objectified spectacle of space for which the viewer is the audience. Although the frame can be seen as a physical barrier to what lies beyond, the polished surface of the lacquer paint has a mirroring effect that inevitably reflects the viewer's own silhouette, creating a continuum between the space they occupy and the pictorial space of the painting. Blurring the distinctions between painting, sculpture and architecture the Ambienti, and on a more domestic scale, the Teatrini, can be considered in many ways the culmination of Fontana's art, effecting the viewer's appreciation of both the space within the work and beyond. By puncturing the flat plane of the canvas, Fontana opened up the surface to emphasise the three-dimensional aspects of the supposedly two-dimensional. In this sense, he believed his works were sculptures, and the Teatrini's multiple levels extend his conceptual exploration of space to heighten our awareness not only of the painting as a three-dimensional, sculptural object, but also as a form of gateway into the hidden and infinite worlds behind it.