Più vero del vero, 1995

At the centre of a plexiglas case, with a primed canvas inside it, a black pencil grazes the canvas but without touching the surface, as if to withhold the instant that precedes contact. The case is inside a larger rectangle drawn in pencil on the wall, while some sheets of drawing paper – some of which with drawings of presumed quadrilaterals – disperse with gradual scattering, from the inside of the case to the outside, the hypotheses of the presumed paintings.
The title focuses on the gesture of the pencil pointed towards the canvas as a concrete and authentic expression – “truer than true" – of the possibility that an imagine can become visible on the canvas. In the artist's own words: “Più vero del vero (Truer than true), that is, the 'moment of truth' constituted not so much by the lines that the pencil will manage to leave on the surface of the canvas, but by the fact itself that the pencil points straight to the purpose, to capture, that is, the pure eventuality that this will occur".1
The same theme was developed in two other variants, one of them from the same year and similar (GPO-0756), the other more complex and made in 1998 (GPO-0806).

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. 755 p. 768.