Moto perpetuo, 1998
GPO-0813
Perpetual Motion
Frame with black passepartout, pencil on card stock, collage on passepartout, on glass and on wall
Frame 100 x 70 cm, overall dimensions variable
Private collection, Como
From December 2000 to December 2002 on loan at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin
From 15 May 2012 to 31 March 2014 on loan at Museo Cantonale d'Arte di Lugano
Emerging from the envelope held in precarious balance in the lower left corner of the black passepartout is a postcard with a reproduction of the Boy with a Spinning-Top (1737-38) by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. The image acts as a turning point for the drawing developed over several blank cards, which fall freely and at random, gradually dispersing until they reach the edge of the support surface (the ones in contact with the edges of the frame and the wall are shaped). The spiralling pattern mimics the movement of the spinning-top (hence, the title), which in the seventeenth-century painting spins on its centre, while balanced on the edge of the table.
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Le portrait du fils de M. Godefroy, joaillier, applique à voir tourner un toton, dit aussi L'enfant au toton, dit encore Portrait d'Auguste-Gabriel Godefroy, 1737-38, oil on canvas, 67 x 76 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
| 1998-99 | Siena, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo delle Papesse, Itinere. 1, 21 November 1998 - 30 January 1999, repr. in the exhibition booklet n. pag. (exhibition view, in the image on top the work is visible on the bottom left wall). |
| 2000-01 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Arte povera in collezione, 6 December 2000 - 25 March 2001, catalogue entry by M. Disch p. 226, col. repr. p. 227. |
| 2002 | Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Arte Povera: Art from Italy 1967-2002, 23 August - 11 novembre, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 138, col. repr. p. 20, referred to in the text by C. Christov-Bakargiev p. 16. |
| • | Arte povera in collezione (Rivoli-Milan: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and Edizioni Charta, 2000), catalogue entry by M. Disch p. 226, col. repr. p. 227 (exhibition view Rivoli 2000-01). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 813 p. 834, col. repr. (exhibition view Rivoli 2000-01). |
| • | F. Fergonzi, “Per una fortuna novecentesca di Chardin in Italia”, in Chardin. Il pittore del silenzio, exhibition catalogue, Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, 2010, p. 70, not repr. |
| • | Arte Povera in Moscow. Works from the collection of the Castello di Rivoli, exhibition catalogue, Moscow, Multimedia Art Museum, 2011, col. repr. pp. 14-15 (exhibition view Rivoli 2000-01). |
