L’ospite, 1992

A colour photograph mounted on canvas, printed in negative and in a blue tone, is propped up against a chair turned so that it faces the photographic model, while a second chair, placed at the centre of a primed canvas lying on the ground, recalls the chair with the mirror in the photograph. Four other images are scattered in between the chairs and the canvas on the ground: placed on the empty chair is a photograph of the first installation of the work (which was different from the one that followed); at the foot of the other chair is a photographic print in positive of the image mounted on the canvas; on the seat of the same chair is a sheet of white paper, while beneath the canvas lying on the ground a sheet of black paper is partially held down.
The photograph mounted on the canvas 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 left 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
The title – used for the first time in 1986 (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 pre-existing, 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), 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.