Corpo estraneo, 1986-87

A primed canvas, hanging down from the centre of a long wall, is contained at the point where two drawings intersect, thus putting the vision of the canvas itself in perspective. The black pencil drawing reproduces a perspectival view of a row of rectangles one after the other, captured by a point of view at the extreme right, while the one outlined in red pencil traces the lines of sight of a gaze positioned at the opposite end of the wall. The trapezoidal format of the canvas – shaped so that it expresses the vanishing point – and the nails applied on the front along the left side corroborate the visual artifice that includes the canvas in the site where the two specular gazes intersect. At the top of the wall, in the area corresponding to the canvas, a crumpled proof of a monographic publication about the artist represents the "foreign body": this image outside of the frame, the unknown that in the trajectory of the gaze remains an undefined and impenetrable subject.
As part of the presentation of the work in Rome in 1987, Paolini prolonged the two perspectival drawings in the adjacent exhibition room, amplifying – or further dispersing – the perspectival vision of a painting.