Copia e originale, 2023
GPO-1162
Copy and Original
Plaster cast, ostrich egg, xerox reproductions, plexiglas sheet, white plinth, plexiglas case
Sheet 49 x 49 cm, plinth 80 x 50 x 50 cm, case 50 x 50 x 50 cm, overall dimensions 130 x 50 x 50 cm
Private collection
The plaster cast of a hand converses with the perfect shape of an ostrich egg; both of them are arranged on two slightly staggered halves of a photographic reproduction of the starry sky, which in Paolini's language symbolizes ineffable completeness. The plaster cast is the copy par excellence, the imitation of an absent object, while the egg is at once the "origin" and "original", symbolizing the perfection that is given in nature.
The hand suspended between the desire to touch the Absolute and the impossibility of grasping it recalls the yearning for the sublime that connotes the artist's poetics, albeit aware of the unbridgeable distance separating the original from the copy, the model from the illusion of its representation.
| 2023-24 | Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Giulio Paolini. Et in Arcadia Ego, 15 October 2023 - 25 August 2024, col. repr. pp. 14-15, 30-31, 55, 66-67 (exhibition views), text by L. Balbi pp. 54-56. |
| • | G. Paolini, “Et in Arcadia ego”, in Giulio Paolini. Et in Arcadia ego, exhibition catalogue, Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti (Imola: Manfredi Edizioni, 2024), p. 29. |
