Ex libris, 1995-96
GPO-0771
Table bookstand, bound book with blank pages, photo print, plexiglas sheet
Bookstand 25 x 35 cm, plexiglas sheet 50 x 50 cm, overall dimensions 25 x 75 x 80 cm
Private collection
• 1996, Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert: the artist installed the work on the floor integrating it with a hanging steel cable that dropped down on the reading stand, thus underscoring the fall.
Emerging from a bound book with blank pages, bound in black cloth and wedged inside an upside-down table reading stand is the cut-out image of a hand corresponding to the shape in negative of the same hand left in the original photograph from which it was cut out (the image reproduces a photomontage of an open hand on a blank sheet, which is in turn lying on a larger sheet).
The Latin locution in the title designates to the letter the hand emerging “from the book”. In a broader sense – recalling the meaning of an ex libris as the label identifying the owner of a book– it also refers to the hand as a distinctive "mark" of the artist who yearns to "touch" a dimension that continues to escape him.
| 1996 | Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Giulio Paolini. L’Île enchantée, 6 January - 17 February. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), col. repr. p. 326 (exhibition view Paris 1996). |
| • | 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). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 771 p. 784, col. repr. |
| • | Arte povera 2011, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), col. repr. no. 323 (exhibition view Paris 1996). |
