Su due piedi, 1986
GPO-0564
On Two Feet
Primed canvas, men’s shoes, books, cardboard boxes for photo prints, wooden frames
Canvas 200 x 200 cm, overall dimensions 230 x 200 cm
Jeanne and Charles Vandenhove Collection, Vandenhove Centre for Architecture and Art – Ghent University, Ghent
Gift of Charles Vandenhove, 2016
From 2007 to 2012 on loan at Bonnenfantenmuseum, Maastricht
The shoes leaning up against the wall keep the canvas in balance just a short distance from the wall.
A large blank canvas poised on a pile of objects – three wooden frames, two catalogues,1 four boxes for photographic prints – is topped by a pair of black men's shoes, which are leaning up against the wall.
In the here and now – offhandedly, or “su due piedi” in Italian – the canvas suspended between several traces of the past and the possibility of a future upholds the "body" of the author in precarious balance.
1 These are the two-volume box set made for the artist's solo exhibition at the Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne in 1984, and the catalogue of the group show Identité Italienne (Paris: Musée national d’art moderne Centre Georges Pompidou,1981).
| 1986 | Brussels, Galerie Albert Baronian, Giulio Paolini. Tableau vivant, from 13 February. |
| 2013 | Deurle, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Collectie / Collection Jeanne & Charles Vandenhove, 30 June - 13 October, cited in the list of works from the collection p. 159, repr. p. 116. |
| 2023 | Liège, La Boverie, Private Views. Collections privées d’art contemporain Liège, 28 April - 13 August, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 222, col. repr. p. 132. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1986, vol. 1, repr. p. 57. |
| • | G. Celant, Giulio Paolini. Tra Telaio e Paolini (Turin: Gruppo GFT, 1988), repr. p. 10. |
| • | Galerie Albert Baronian in ICC, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp, ICC Internationaal Cultureel Centrum, 1988, repr. p. 7 (exhibition view Brussels 1986). |
| • | F. Poli, Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), repr. no. 124. |
| • | D. von Drathen, “Giulio Paolini. Der blinde Blick des Sehers”, in Künstler. Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst 33, no. 7 (Munich: Weltkunst-Bruckmann Verlag, 1996), p. 10, repr. p. 12; republished in Id., Vortex of silence. Proposition for an art criticism beyond aesthetic categories (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2004), p. 228, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 564 p. 575, repr. |
| • | Nothing is permanent. Albert Baronian, profession: galeriste, exhibition catalogue, Brussels, La Centrale électrique, Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Bruxelles, 2009, repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Brussels 1986). |
