Catalogue entry

Display

The installation is determined by the artist each time, based on the exhibition situation. It can include one or more editions, arranged along the diagonals of the room: in the case of several editions, the central intersecting point coincides with the centre of the room.
Depending on the situation, the structure can be installed with a variable number of leaves, starting from a minimum of three.

Display chronology

• 1992, Milan, Galleria Stein: one edition, with seven leaves, phosphorescent white; accompanied by canvases of the same format as the empty squares, in part installed in the area corresponding to the empty cut-outs, in part on the ground against the leaves of the folding screen, or associated with other works on display.
• 1992, Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert: one edition, with seven leaves, the colours of the iris; accompanied by plexiglas sheets in the same format as the empty squares, propped up against the panels of the structure, scattered all around or associated with other works on display.
• 1994, Amiens, Musée des Beaux-Arts: one edition, with seven leaves, the colours of the iris; accompanied by twenty-eight canvases of the same format as the empty squares, some of which installed close to the structure, while others in random order on the walls of the Grand Salon of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, as an "inventory" of possible variations of the fourteen old master paintings on display in the museum. Each canvas featured a drawing of squares matched in different ways, understood as the ensemble of squares of which it was one element.
• 1995, New York, Marian Goodman Gallery: one edition, with seven leaves, the colours of the iris; accompanied by plexiglas sheets of the same format as the empty squares, propped up against the panels of the structure, scattered all around or associated with other work on display.
• 1995, Mira, Villa Widman Foscari: one edition, with five leaves, phosphorescent white; accompanied by five canvases of the same format as the empty squares, in part installed in the area corresponding to the empty cut-outs, in part on the ground up against the panels of the folding screen.
• 1995, Seoul, The National Museum of Contemporary Art: one edition, with seven leaves, the colours of the iris; accompanied by plexiglas sheets of the same format as the empty squares, propped up against the leaves of the structure, scattered all around or associated with the other works on display.
• 1998, Graz, Neue Galerie: two editions, with seven leaves each, phosphorescent white and colours of the iris; arranged along the diagonals of the "island", surrounded by numerous other works.
• 1999, Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea: two editions, with seven leaves each, phosphorescent white and the colours of the iris; arranged along the diagonals of the "island", surrounded by numerous other works.
• 2005 Winterthur, Kunstmuseum: one edition, with five leaves, phosphorescent white; accompanied by five sheets of plexiglas of the same format as the empty squares, arranged at the foot of the structure. The installation was not arranged along the diagonal of the room owing to a lack of space.
• 2008, Rome, Auditorium: several leaves of the colours of the iris edition and leaves with valets taken from the phosphorescent white edition; arranged discontinuously and accompanied by other works and materials all around.
• 2013, Rome, MACRO and 2014, Londra, Whitechapel Gallery: one edition with eight leaves (given the length of the room; colours of the iris – leaves borrowed from the phosphorescent white edition) and an edition with just four leaves (narrow room; phosphorescent white), intersected along the median axes of the room; accompanied by other works.
• 2016, Milan, Galleria Stein: one edition, with three leaves, phosphorescent white; arranged as an integral part of the installation Fine.
• 2017, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte: one edition, with five leaves, phosphorescent white; arranged along with a typescript placed on a game table on loan from the museum collection and a pencil drawing on one of the walls of the exhibition space.
• 2025, Codroipo, Villa Manin: one edition, with seven leaves, colours of the iris; no other elements or works.

Description

Seven plexiglas leaves featuring the profile of half a column carved along the sides are joined in the manner of a folding screen so that together the carvings recall the image of a colonnade. Situated on the leaves at either end is the colour life-size reproduction of a valet. The object that the two figures appear to be holding coincides with an empty square, repeated at the centre of each leave of the "folding screen"; the profile of these cut-out squares is enamel-painted, with a different colour for each of the four edition in which the work was made (phosphorescent white, gold, a range from white to black, the colours of the iris).
The Latin words in the title, which mean “behold thus”, are from a passage in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, in which our gaze is invited to contemplate the movements of the atoms caught in the beam created by the rays of sunlight that have filtered into a dark room.1
The valet de chambre, taken from French eighteenth-century theatre iconography, introduced in 1983-84 in the form of silhouettes, and since 1985 also used in a photographic version, represents a particularly significant character in Paolini's poetics. The gesture of offering or handing something that defines the valet – analogous with that of presenting and observing, which distinguishes other figures in costume appearing in previous works – symbolically corresponds for Paolini to the act of representation itself, understood to be a device that guides the gaze towards the construction of an image. Anonymous and detached valets also refer to the role that Paolini attributes to the author: rather than inventing or demonstrating something, he limits himself to elevating the gesture of the offer to the very topic of the work. By way of the stand-in of the valet, the author exits the scene to take his seat in the audience and assume the role of the spectator, who before the work waits or listens, awaiting the offer that it announces to his gaze and that the gesture of the valet makes evident.
In this sense, Contemplator enim is considered by the artist not such much a work per se, as a sort of "curtain", which defines the exhibition space in the terms of a stage on which other "events" take place (other works or material elements). The first installation project, which was never realized, called for the presence of four editions according to the squaring of Disegno geometrico (1960, GPO-0001), with two editions corresponding to the diagonals and two to the median lines.2 Depending on the situation of the exhibition, the installation calls for the placement of a single edition along a diagonal in the room, or several editions, intersecting along the diagonals so that the point of intersection coincides with the centre of the room.

1 Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book II, l. 114 ff.
2 Cf. to this regard Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, Graz, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), pp. 175-179; republished in Italian in Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 1999), pp. 33-35.

Sources

Title from Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book II, lines 114-115 (“Contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum” / ”Behold whenever the sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down across dark halls of houses”).

Exhibitions

1992-93	Milan, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini, 27 October 1992 - 24 February 1993; fluorescent white edition.
1992	Parigi, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Giulio Paolini, 28 November - 24 December; iris colours edition.
1994	Amiens, Musée de Picardie, Le modèle, le double, l’identique, 25 June - 16 October, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 45, col. repr. p. 26 (exhibition view); iris colours edition.
1995	New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Giulio Paolini, 7 January - 4 February; iris colours edition.
1995	Mira, Riviera del Brenta, Villa Widmann Foscari, Itinerario. Giulio Paolini, Domenico Bianchi, Bernhard Rüdiger, 8 June - 18 July, vol. Itinerario, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 34, repr. pp. 18-19 (exhibition views fluorescent white edition).
1995-96	Seoul, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Tradition and Innovation: Italian Art since 1945, 12 September 1995 - 23 January 1996, cited in the checklist of exhibited works, col. repr. pp. 46-47 (exhibition view New York 1995); iris colours edition.
1998	Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum, Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, 4 April - 31 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works nos. 11-14 p. 182 (information referred to the initial project that was never realized), col. repr. p. 300 (exhibition view Mira 1995); fluorescent white and iris colours editions.
1999	Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, 8 May - 25 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 40 p. 38 (dati riferiti al progetto iniziale non realizzato), col. repr. pp. 96-97 (exhibition view Graz 1998), 114-117 (exhibition views); fluorescent white and iris colours editions.
2005	Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Giulio Paolini. Esposizione universale, 23 April - 24 June, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 16 p. 87, col. repr. n. pag. (exhibition view), referred to in the text by D. Schwarz p. 23; fluorescent white edition.
2008	Rome, Spazio Risonanze, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Risonanze #2. Giulio Paolini & Fabio Vacchi, 9 May - 15 June, not repr.; elements of different editions, installed to form three different “screens” (iris colours edition and elements with valets from the fluorescent white edition).
2013-14	Rome, MACRO Museo d'arte contemporanea Roma, Giulio Paolini. Essere o non essere, 29 November 2013 - 9 March 2014, touring to: London, Whitechapel Gallery, 9 July - 14 September 2014, cited in the checklist of exhibited works pp. 154 (Rome) / 155 (London), col. repr. pp. 120-121 (exhibition views in Rome), entry by M. Disch pp. 128-129, referred to in the foreword by I. Blazwick p. 14 and in the texts by B. Pietromarchi p. 41; col. repr. in the exhibition guide made by the MACRO p. 31 (exhibition view Winterthur 2005), entry by M. Disch pp. 30-31; fluorescent white and iris colours editions.
2016-17	Milan, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini. Fine, 10 November 2016 - 29 April 2017, col. repr. pp. 88-89, 91-93 (exhibition views); fluorescent white edition, installed as an integral part of the work Fine, 2016.
2017-18	Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Carta Bianca. Capodimonte Imaginaire, 12 December 2017 - 11 November 2018, col. repr. (loose postcard, exhibition view, with detail); fluorescent white edition.
2025	Codroipo, Villa Manin, Architetture trasparenti, 8 June - 26 October, col. repr. pp. 65, 66-67 (exhibition views), referred to in the text by G. Comis p. 11 and in an anonymous text p. 64; iris colour edition.

Artist’ writings

•	G. Paolini, “Koh-I-Noor”, in Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), pp. 175-179.

Bibliography

•	Inside Out – Museo Città Eventi, exhibition catalogue, Prato, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 1993), col. repr. p. 52 (exhibition view Milan 1992).
•	D. Scudero, “È il mondo che gira”, in Opening 22 (Rome), March, 1994, repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Paris 1992).
•	L. Marucci, “Giulio Paolini”, in Juliet Art Magazine 15, no. 67 (Trieste), April, 1994, repr. p. 33 (exhibition view Paris 1992).
•	M. Bouisset, Arte Povera (Paris: Éditions du Regard, 1994), repr. p. 110 (exhibition view Paris 1992).
•	E. Ercoli, “Intervista a Giulio Paolini”, in Next 35 (Rome), Autumn-Winter, 1995, b/w repr. p. 14, col. repr. on cover (exhibition view Mira 1995).
•	XLVII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. Catalogo generale, exhibition catalogue, Venice, La Biennale di Venezia (Milan: Electa, 1997), col. repr. pp. 212-213 (exhibition view Mira 1995).
•	Artmonie. Architettura e scultura negli spazi pubblici, exhibition catalogue, Ivano Fracena, Castel Ivano, 1997, repr. p. 66 (exhibition view Mira 1995).
•	Giulio Paolini. Premio Internazionale Koinè 2000 alla carriera, exhibition catalogue, Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti (Milan: Electa, 2001), col. repr. pp. 58-59 (exhibition view Turin 1999).
•	“Giulio Paolini. Esposizione Universale”, photo shoot of the solo exhibition in Winterthur 2005, in Lotus 125 (Milan), September, 2005, col. repr. pp. 70, 71 (with details).
•	G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), plate no. X (exhibition view Graz 1998).
•	30/40. A Selection of Forty Artists from Thirty Years of Exhibitions at Marian Goodman Gallery, exhibition catalogue, New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, 2007, col. repr. p. 247 (exhibition view New York 1995).
•	M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 694 pp. 708-709, repr. (exhibition view Mira 1995) and col. repr. (exhibition view Milan 1992).
•	Collezione Christian Stein. Una storia dell'arte italiana / A History of Italian Art (Valencia-Lugano-Milan: IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Museo Cantonale d'Arte and Mondadori Electa, 2010), col. repr. p. 319 (exhibition view Milan 1992).
•	G. Celant, Arte Povera. Storia e storie (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), col. repr. p. 221 (exhibition view Milan 1992).
•	Ragione e furore. Lucrezio nell’Italia contemporanea, edited by F. Citti and D. Pellacani (Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon, 2020), pp. LV-LVI, not repr.
•	Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. pp. 227 (exhibition view Graz 1998), 231 (exhibition view Turin 1999), 267 (exhibition view Rome 2013).

Contemplator enim, 1992