Osservatorio, 1988
GPO-0629
Observatory
Collage on photo print, pencil on wall
Twenty-two framed parts 29 x 38 cm each, overall dimensions variable
Lisa and Tucci Russo Collection, Torre Pellice
• 1988, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna the work was conceived as a long frieze (867.5 cm) to be installed at the top of a wall.
• 2015, Torre Pellice, Studio Tucci Russo per l’Arte contemporanea (installation of works by the gallery's artists, on the bottom floor): the artist reformulated the work on a wall measuring 500 x 600 cm, extending it to the entire wall, against the backdrop of a drawn pattern.
A uniform grid outlined over the entire extent of the wall serves as a chessboard that contains twenty-two photographs in random order. The pictures are all the same but each time they bear a different collage. The repeated image reproduces the Sala Veranda of Villa Pignatelli in Naples, dominated by a Neoclassical colonnade.1 From one element to another this "observatory" becomes a theatre of the appearances and disappearances of the semi-columns – one of which upside down, the other right side up – in Caleidoscopio, 1976 (GPO-0323),1 dislocated like game pieces in a puzzle in gradually different points of the flooring's modular pattern, developed along oblique axes with respect to the monumental columns, generating a kaleidoscopic geometry of vanishing points, doubles, and reflections.
1 The photograph was taken by Paolo Mussat Sartor in 1978, on the occasion of Paolini’s solo show.
| 1988 | Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Giulio Paolini, 24 November 1988 - 26 February 1989, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 95, not repr. |
| 2015 | Torre Pellice, Tucci Russo Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, selected works by the artists represented by the gallery, from 29 March. |
| 2018 | Torre Pellice, Tucci Russo Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Rainbow 2018, 10 February - 29 July. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 629 p. 647, col. repr. |
