The spent blood of all my stars - Devotions VIII 2007

This installation, by Gian Maria Tosatti, feels like a scene from a play, or maybe the quiet aftermath of one. It’s murky, dim, and grey, except for the chair with a seat that looks suspiciously like blood. I wonder what it must have been like for Tosatti to set this up. Did he start with the chair, imagining a lone figure sitting there, waiting? Or did the torn papers come first, scattered like fallen leaves, each one marked with a bright red number? It reminds me of a countdown, or some kind of game gone wrong. The whole scene has a stillness that’s almost deafening. Like the air is thick with unspoken words, maybe a heavy, quiet tragedy. But I also think Tosatti is pointing to something bigger here – an ongoing conversation about loss, memory, and how we find meaning in the spaces we inhabit. He’s made a space of inquiry and a question mark of a room.