Off-limits, 1999
GPO-1150
Collage on black passepartout and on plexiglas
40.5 x 40.5 cm
Private collection
The photographic hands (the artist's), applied to the black passe-partout, seem to withhold an image that actually remains hidden from sight. The square at the centre is cut out; the wrinkled element, applied to the back of the display case is a "blind" vanishing point.
In this sense, the title alludes to the forbidden access or the insurmountable limit of the central cut-out, accentuated by the passe-partout and amplified by the gesture of the hands. Beyond the verifiable limits determined by the curtain-passe-partout, the virtual and immaterial dimension of the representation opens up, averting direct contact at each attempt to fix it.
The same theme was formulated in several variants on paper, developed between 2003 and 2005 (cf. GPC-0959, GPC-1014, GPC-1019, GPC-1035), and in a later version, made in 2008, with a passe-partout-like case and the central element applied to the wall (GPO-1151).
| 1999 | London, Lisson Gallery, Giulio Paolini. Stanze, 16 April - 22 May. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 1999), col. repr. p. 133 (first state). |
| • | G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), repr. no. 14b p. 89 (first state). |