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Planetario, 1989-90

GPO-0672

Planetarium

Photographic reproduction, plexiglas sheet, roulette, crumpled fragment of photographic reproduction

Plexiglas sheet 60 x 50 cm, overall dimensions 11 x 78 x 50 cm

Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin

Gift of the artist, 25 October 2012, archive no. GPO-0672

A roulette wheel is placed on the reproduction of the phases of Venus, in the area corresponding to the phase when the planet's face is completely obscured. On the plate is a crumpled portion of the planet cut out from the image hidden by the roulette, as if it were a ball used to play a game.
Overall, “the situation calls into play whether or not all the parts correspond, and that this way beauty – symbolically alluded to by Venus – can be completed”,
1 as the artist tells us.
The same theme corresponds to a work from the same year entitled
Le fasi di Venere (GPO-0673), as well as to a subsequent variant made in 1995 (GPO-0759).

1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 672 p. 685.

Image of the phases of Venus from David Bergamini, L’Universo (Milan: Mondadori, 1968), p. 49 (”Le fasi di Venere”).

1990 Bologna, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Villa delle Rose, Giulio Paolini. Hotel de l’Univers, 27 May - 29 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 22 p. 17, repr. pp. 73, 81 (exhibition views).
G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 672 p. 685.
M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 672 p. 685, col. repr.
Entry by Maddalena Disch, 02/02/2026