Castelli di carte, 1995
GPO-0766
House of Cards
Plexiglas photo frame, collage on acetate sheets, playing cards, game table, green rag, plexiglas round, plexiglas sheets, paper fragments
Table Ø 100 cm, four plexiglas sheets 50 x 50 cm each, overall dimensions 120 x 160 x 160 cm
Luisa Laureati Briganti Collection, Rome
The four collages made from red cards and the details from a reproduction of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin's Le château de cartes (ca. 1737) – some of the pieces seen from the verso appear to be white – are arranged in four plexiglas portrait frames propped up one against the other. This "castle of cards" is arranged at the centre of a game table, on which a plexiglas disc holds down other cards scattered all around on a green cloth. On the ground, in the area corresponding to the table's legs, four plexiglas sheets, slightly staggered and partially overlapping, hold down the fragments borrowed from the linear scheme of a solitaire.
Whereas the reference to Chardin evokes the genre of the vanitas, the card player is an implicit stand-in for the author, who on his own work table is constantly shuffling his cards, aware that every new configuration is a relative episode with respect to the "absolute" work that escapes every attempt at appropriation.
The same theme was developed in two earlier variants, made in 1993 (GPO-0711) and in 1994 (GPO-0766), respectively.
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon-Chardin, Le château de cartes, c. 1737, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
| 1996 | Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Giulio Paolini. L’Île enchantée, 6 January - 17 February. |
| 1998 | Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum, Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, 4 April - 31 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 9 p. 182, col. repr. p. 326 (exhibition view Paris 1996). |
| 1999 | Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, 8 May - 25 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 37 p. 38, col. repr. pp. 96-97 (exhibition view Graz 1998), 116-117 (exhibition view Turin 1999). |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Premio Internazionale Koinè 2000 alla carriera, exhibition catalogue, Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti (Milan: Electa, 2001), col. repr. pp. 54-55 (exhibition view Paris 1996), 58-59 (exhibition view Turin 1999). |
| • | G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), plate no. X (exhibition view Graz 1998). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 766 p. 778, col. repr. (auction view “ROMA – The Road to Contemporary Art” 2008). |
| • | Arte povera 2011, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), col. repr. no. 323 (exhibition view Paris 1996). |
| • | E. Volpato, “L’Ile enchantée. La visione è cieca”, in E. Franz et al., Giulio Paolini. Vedo e non vedo. In tema 1 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2014), p. 68, col. repr. p. 68 (exhibition view Paris 1996). |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. pp. 227 (exhibition view Graz 1998), 231 (exhibition view Turin 1999). |
