Ultimo modello, 1992-24

A plexiglas structure made up of two orthogonal dividers intersecting at the centre, and a horizontal plane, featuring a black carving of a grid, is set down on a collage of reproductions of previous works1. In the four sections generated by the dividers plexiglas elements are arranged in the manner of a folding screen, with a drawing of dry-etched classical columns; two of these elements also bear the image of a male figure wearing a stage costume.2 Scattered on the horizontal plane are some torn fragments of photographic reproductions (images of the artist's studio, designs and motifs typical of his iconographic repertoire), along with some small reflecting plexiglas sheets; other fragments of images are held between the folding screen-like structures. At the centre of the ensemble, suspended in mid-air, is a crumpled photographic reproduction of the sky.
In its intricate ensemble, Ultimo modello suggests the worksite around a work in progress announced by echoes of the past, clues, and visual hypotheses, as if these were the pieces of a mosaic being assembled. Broadly speaking, the disorderliness of the images – offsetting the order of the modular grid and the geometry of the plexiglas structures – recalls the search, constantly being renewed by the artist, for an absolute dimension, symbolically represented by the picture of the sky situated at the centre of the work. Similarly, the title, taken, along with some material components, from a work produced in 1992 (hence the work's two dates),3 announces something that is unprecedented: the plexiglas structure with the two orthogonal dividers is a sort of model of a room or a stage, which foreshadows something happening, an apparition, a representation as yet unknown.


1 The collage derives from the last version of the work Il nome proprio, 1992 (GPO-0574) and reproduces the previous displays of that same work.
2 The six elements in the shape of a folding screen constitute the model in miniature of Contemplator enim, 1992 (GPO-0694). The valets wearing costumes while holding a case or other images before them, introduced by Paolini in his work in 1983-84, refer to the very act of the representation, understood as a device that offers the gaze the construction of an image.
3 The cross-shaped structure and the small reflecting sheets are from Ultimo modello, 1992 (GPO-0704), of which the work in question constitutes a different formulation.