Piazze d’Italia. Progetto per Piazza della Signoria, Firenze, 2001

The project planned for Piazza della Signoria in Florence, which was never realized,1 consists of a central core and a series of peripheral elements distributed spoke-like all around it.
At the centre, a brick base (200 x 1200 x 1200 cm) houses three other similar overlapping platforms, in decreasing size and gradually rotated by 45°. Each base, starting from the second one, supports a metal structure that, starting from the third base, holds a “painting” at the centre of each upright post. Constituted by a sheet of glass, these twelve “paintings”, they too gradually decreasing in size (starting from 200 x 200 cm), feature a schematic perspectival drawing of the Piazza and the work itself. The twelve peripheral elements are instead made up of an iron cube (140 x 140 x 140 cm), set down on a concrete base of the same dimensions, containing a glass sheet with a drawing similar to the ones planned for the central core.
Understood to be a sort of “observatory”, the work reflects the public’s gaze: it is the work itself that looks at the viewers, reflecting the trajectories of their own gazes. In the artist’s own words: “It is the work that observes, that itself becomes the exhibition. Of what? Of our gaze that, in observing it, wavers and wanders until it confuses the two roles – that of the author and that of the viewer – in a single, inscrutable point of view”.2 In this sense, the “paintings” that are gradually staggered so that they recompose a visual itinerary equal to 360° – twelve like the numbers on the face of a clock – retraced the points of view of the viewer who moves around the construction.
At first, the artist had entitled his project Monitor, perhaps in relation to a first idea that included the use of a lightbox; lastly, he chose the title Piazze d’Italia, which he also used for another series of work made in the same year (cf. GPO-0865, GPO-0866, GPO-0872).

1 The project is part of the initiative by Sergio Risaliti and by then Mayor of Siena, Pierluigi Piccini, which involved placing a work of art in three of Italy’s major squares: Paolini in Piazza della Signoria a Firenze, Jeff Koons in Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, and Mariko Mori in Piazza del Campo in Siena. After the two initiators failed to be re-elected, the initiative was eventually cancelled.
2 G. Paolini, unpublished note to the project, 2001, typescript held in the artist’s archive.