Le fasi di Venere, 1990

A roulette wheel is placed on the reproduction of the phases of Venus, in the area corresponding to the second phase and in a slightly staggered position with respect to the circle of the planet, which has been cut out so that the void can be glimpsed. On the roulette plate, as if it were a ball used to play a game, is a crumpled paper fragment of an unknown subject (secretly chosen by Gerd de Vries, with whom the artist offered the work as a gift to their common friend Paul Maenz).
Overall, “the situation calls into play whether or not all the parts correspond, and that this way beauty – symbolically alluded to by Venus – can be completed”,1 as the artist tells us.
The same theme corresponds to a work from the same period entitled Planetario (GPO-0672), as well as to a later variant made in 1995 (GPO-0759).

1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 672 p. 685.