Pagine (Conté à Paris), 2022
GPO-1142
Pages (Conté à Paris)
Book bound with blank pages, black and red ink on photo print, black Conté à Paris pencil
28 x 42 x 3 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the last page of the book, centre: “Pagine / (Conté à Paris)” / Giulio Paolini / 2022”
Colophonarte, Belluno
The work can be installed on a table or another piece of furniture or on a plinth (80 x 50 x 50 cm), protected by a plexiglas case (50 x 50 x 50 cm).
On the right page of an open book a photograph reproduces a pair of eyeglasses, which are also set down on the right side of a book bound with blank pages. In turn, outlined on the photograph is the image of an open book drawn with black ink, and two squares, drawn with red ink, a smaller one, at the centre, and a larger one. Laid down on the photograph is a black “Conté à Paris” pencil.
The “game” of pages and squares that reference each other reciprocally alludes to the becoming of an artwork; that is to say to the research that the artist – evoked through the glasses and the pencil – always renews from scratch in the attempt to find a balancing point where everything is arranged in a finished image.
The title pays homage to Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755-1805), the inventor of the modern pencil and the creator of the famous French trademark.
The same theme is formulated in a second variant, with the same title, produced in 2023 (GPO-1149).
Photograph of Giulio Einaudi’s glasses taken by Paolo Mussat Sartor, 1994.
