Quattro immagini uguali, 1969-98
GPO-0812
Four Identical Images
Photo prints in plexiglas cases, easels or steel cables (varies with installation)
Four plexiglas cases 50 x 50 cm each, overall dimensions variable
Collection of the artist
• 1998, Siena, Palazzo delle Papesse: the cases with the photographs were set down on four easels; the installation around the work Esposizione universale (1992, GPO-0705) amplified the assumptions underlying the work.
• 2001, Verona, Palazzo Forti: the cases with the photographs were set down on four easels; the artist added some images to the area corresponding to the verso of each photograph.
• 2003, Milan, Fondazione Prada: the cases were held between the ceiling and the floor by steel cables; the artist made further changes in the images corresponding to the verso of each photograph.
Four identical photographs of the work Quattro immagini uguali, 1969 (GPO-0194), each of which framed in a plexiglas case, are arranged at equidistant intervals along the diagonals of the room: depending on the exhibition space, they are arranged on four easels, or hung at the viewer’s eye level from steel cables stretched between the floor and the ceiling. On the verso of the photographs are other images, respectively: the colour reproduction of the back of a canvas, a hand holding several sheets, the perspectival drawing of the other three elements in the work seen from that point of view, and the photograph itself of Quattro immagini uguali, completed, in the area corresponding to the central canvas, with a square drawn in pencil (corresponding to the fourth invisible canvas in the photograph).
Going back in the same tautological register to Quattro immagini uguali made in 1969, the work is a mise-en-scène – or “mise en abîme” – of the idea of the work as a virtual container of all the images past and future that in the here and now of its exhibition direct the viewer’s gaze towards the same exhibition situation.
| 1998-99 | Siena, Palazzo delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Itinere. 1, 21 November 1998 - 30 January 1999, repr. in the exhibition guide n. pag. (exhibition view); installation with easels. |
| 2001 | Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, Giulio Paolini. Premio Internazionale Koinè 2000 alla carriera, 15 September 2001 - 6 January 2002, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 74, col. repr. pp. 30-31 (exhibition view Siena 1998), text by M. Disch pp. 30-32; installation with easels. |
| 2003 | Milan, Fondazione Prada, Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, 29 October - 18 December, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 403 (with incorrect technique), repr. p. 23 (exhibition view, detail); installation with steel cables. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 1999), col. repr. pp. 56-57 (exhibition view Siena 1998). |
| • | Palazzo Forti. La Galleria d’arte moderna di Verona 1982-2007, edited by S. Baldanza and P. Nuzzo (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007), col. repr. p. 42 (exhibition view Verona 2001). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 812 pp. 832-833, b/w repr. (exhibition view Verona 2001) and col. repr. (exhibition view Milan 2003). |
