Niente e subito, 2001
GPO-0864
Nothing at Once
Plexiglas, plaster fragments
Three plexiglas volumes: 180 x 90 x 90 cm, 90 x 45 x 45 cm, 22.5 x 22.5 x 22.5 cm, overall dimensions 180 x 90 x 90 cm
Collection of the artist
A plexiglas parallelepiped contains a plinth and a case, they too transparent and half the size with respect to one another. The plinth has a reflecting support surface, so that through the reflection the doubled case also resembles a parallelepiped. On the reflecting surface, large plaster fragments are scattered all around the case, as if they had exploded or been expelled by the small empty cube.
The succession of empty volumes and the plaster fragments harken back to a plastic object that all the same appears to be exiled, eclipsed, in favour of a “nothing” that, on the contrary, is “instantly” revealed, as the title tells us (borrowed from the expression “tutto e subito [all and at once]). In the artist’s own words: “The explosion (or implosion) of the object of the representation in the body of the ‘sculpture’. That nothing that the subject of the work is reduced to is instantly transformed into its own display, however”.1
The same theme was developed, albeit in different terms, in a version from the same year (GPO-0860) and in a variant made in 2006 (GPO-0948).
1 G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), p. 97.
| 2001 | Milan, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini. Niente e subito, from 5 June. |
| 2001 | Salzburg, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Geometrie & Gestus, 23 July - 31 August. |
| 2005 | Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Giulio Paolini. Esposizione universale, 23 April - 24 June, touring to: Münster, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Giulio Paolini. Esposizione universale, 1 October 2005 - 8 January 2006, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 18 p. 87, col. repr. n. pag. (exhibition view), referred to in the text by D. Schwarz p. 23. |
| 2008 | Rome, Spazio Risonanze, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Risonanze #2. Giulio Paolini & Fabio Vacchi, 9 May - 15 June, not repr. |
| 2008 | Carrara, Aula Magna dell’Accademia di Belle Arti, XIII Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara. Nient’altro che scultura, 27 July - 28 September, not repr. |
| 2021 | Torre Pellice, Tucci Russo Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, L’armonia dell’invenzione, from 13 June. |
| • | G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), p. 97 (originally in In extremis, Course taught at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura, Faculty of Arts & Design, Venice, 2002). |
| • | G. Paolini, Andata e ritorno (Milan-Ravenna: Galleria Christian Stein and Danilo Montanari Editore, 2003), col. repr. p. 25. |
| • | G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), repr. p. 97 (in the caption on p. 138 cited with incorrect dimensions). |
| • | E. Franz, “Vedo e non vedo”, in E. Franz et al., Giulio Paolini. Vedo e non vedo. In tema 1 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2014), pp. 38, 40, col. repr. p. 37. |
