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. |
| • | F. Pasini, “La Padania vista da famosi artisti”, in Padania 1 (Milan), January 1992, repr. p. 112 (exhibition view Bologna 1990). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 672 p. 685, col. repr. |
