L’anima in posa, 2023

The plaster cast of a crouching female figure holds a pencil in her right hand, while several sheets of drawing paper are in part held down by the figure, and in part scattered across the floor. The sheets present rectangles that recall the sheets themselves, in free fall.
Symbolically, the cast represents the intangible and ungraspable essence of the soul, while the sheets correspond to its various expressions, which, however, express nothing more than their own existence. In the artist's own words: “The female figure seems to be intent on scattering or gathering the blank sheets (the moods) falling to the ground. Each sheet, released into the air by the figure's hand 'encounters' its equal and draws the profile of the fleeting contact that has just taken place. The pencil lines thus fix the traces of a coincidence that has by now been dissolved”.1

1 G. Paolini, unpublished note related to the project for the solo exhibition at the Galleria Christian Stein, Milan, September 2023 (published in G. Paolini, Eccomi. Qui dove sono [Turin: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Torino 2025], p. 86).