Più vero del vero, 1995

At the centre of a plexiglas case, with a primed canvas inside it, a black pencil grazes the canvas but without touching the surface, as if to withhold the instant that precedes contact. Some sheets of drawing paper trimmed in the area corresponding to the edges of the canvas and continuing outwards with a pencil drawing, disperse with gradual scattering the hypotheses of presumed paintings.
The title focuses on the gesture of the pencil pointed towards the canvas as a concrete and authentic expression – “truer than true” – of the possibility that an imagine can become visible on the canvas. In the artist's own words: “Più vero del vero (Truer than true), that is, the 'moment of truth' constituted not so much by the lines that the pencil will manage to leave on the surface of the canvas, but by the fact itself that the pencil points straight to the purpose, to capture, that is, the pure eventuality that this will occur".1
The same theme was developed in two other variants, one of them from the same year and similar (GPO-0755), the other more complex and made in 1998 (GPO-0806).

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. 755 p. 768.