L’ospite, 1990

A colour photograph mounted on canvas (printed in positive and without toning) is set down on a chair – similar to the chairs reproduced in the image – which is located at the intersection between the diagonals of a primed canvas lying on the floor. The photograph reproduces a situation that was installed by the artist in the entrance hall of his own home, opposite a door that had been left ajar, with two chairs turned so that one faced the viewer and the other was specular. Standing on the chair to the left was the painting by Angelo Garino Nota intima (1887), while the chair to the right held an oval mirror that reflected the engraving, set down on the floor out of view, that portrayed William Hogarth while painting the Comic Muse.1
Analogous to the prints visible in the foreground to the left of the nineteenth-century painting, four colour reproductions – each of which mounted on a slightly larger piece of black or white cardstock – are arranged on the chair or on the canvas on the ground. The images placed on the chair represent, from the first one visible in its entirety to the last half-hidden one, a version in negative, in a yellow tone, of the photograph mounted on the canvas; a work from 1986 also entitled L’ospite (GPO-0569); a variant of L’ospite made in 1989 (GPO-0643). The fourth image, placed on the canvas lying underneath the front right leg of the chair, reproduces the print edition titled L’ospite (1989, GPE-0069).
The title – used for the first time in 1986, in the work reproduced in one of the images set down on the chair (GPO-0569) – refers to the role attributed by Paolini to the author, the central theme of many of his works from the 1980s. Since in Paolini's universe of thinking the work is an entity offered up to the viewer's gaze in its very making or announcing of itself, the author has no choice but to withdraw in order to reserve the field for the work and its hypothetical becoming. After leaving the scene – as indicated by the door left ajar in the photograph – the author becomes the "guest" of something that pre-exists, for which he claims no right except for that of witnessing its possible revelation.
The work is part of a group of six variants, made between 1989 and 2007 (GPO-0643, GPO-0676, GPO-0708, GPO-0719, GPO-0833, GPO-0958), which are distinguished by the toning, the print in positive or in negative, and the installation of the photograph mounted on canvas, set each time in a scene suggested by its own composition.

1 This is the final state (1764) of the self-portrait entitled William Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse, in which the English artist is intent upon painting the Comic Muse, portrayed while holding the mask of a satyr in one hand and associated with the word "Comedy" etched on the base of the column to the right; Hogarth's own treatise on beauty (The Analysis of Beauty) lies at the foot of the easel. Both Garino's painting and Hogarth's engraving are part of Giulio Paolini's private collection.