Expositio, 2019
GPO-1091
White plinths, plaster casts, digital print on acrylic fabric, red ink on photo enlargement, photographic reproductions, transparent plexiglas elements, halogen lamp, rolled up sheets, passepartout, red pencil on primed canvas
Four plinths: 200 x 50 x 50 cm, 80 x 50 x 50 cm, 70 x 50 x 50 cm, 50 x 50 x 50 cm, one cast 115 x 40 x 58 cm, one cast 37 x 20 cm, fabric 300 x 140 cm, case 40 x 40 x 40 cm, four transparent plexiglas sheets 35 x 35 cm each, photo enlargement 50 x 50.5 cm, two reproductions: 29.5 x 33 cm, 30 x 36 cm, crumpled drawing Ø 15 cm, canvas 40 x 40 cm, overall dimensions 200 x 205 x 205 cm
Dismantled work
• 2020, Milan, Massimo De Carlo: the plinths were arranged at the extremes of the star-shaped floor decoration in the middle of the exhibition space.
Four bases of different heights associated in varying ways to objects and materials linked to the artist’s repertoire circumscribe a “place of election” arranged to host the becoming of a work.
The bases serve as a support for a plaster cast of Phidias’ Venus, an image of the night-time sky printed on cloth that drops to the floor, some rolled up exhibition plans, a halogen lamp, a primed canvas with a trace of red pencil, and a passepartout. Arranged on the ground are the plaster cast of a head of Aphrodite, the plan for the work Éclat (1987, GPO-0611), a study for the display of the work itself, and, in a central position, in the beam of light from the lamp, a plexiglas case. Inside the plexiglas case is a rolled up drawing and the profile of the star in the floor and ceiling decoration of the Massimo De Carlo gallery, where the work was shown for the first time, thus emphasizing the centrality of the exhibition moment itself. That is, tautologically “exhibiting”, as the title itself says, the context in which a work is announced and materializes.
• Phidias, Venus, h 115 cm.
• Head of Aphrodite, unknown source.
| 2020 | Milan, Massimo De Carlo, Giulio Paolini. Il mondo nuovo, 15 June - 3 October. |
| • | G. Micicchè, “Giulio Paolini. Tre mostre per 80 anni”, in Millennium 38, supplement to the daily newspaper “Il Fatto Quotidiano” (Rome), 2020, col. repr. p. 112 (exhibition view Milan 2020). |
| • | A. Soldaini, “‘Cos’altro c’è da dire?’”, in Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), p. 37, not repr. |
