Ex libris, 2023
GPO-1165
Plaster cast, bound book with blank pages, torn printed plates, photostatic reproduction on tracing paper, white plinth, plexiglas case
Cast 26 x 10 x 10 cm, open book 24 x 45 x 2 cm, reproduction on tracing paper 16 x 18 cm, plinth 90 x 50 x 50 cm, case 50 x 50 x 50 cm, overall dimensions 140 x 50 x 50 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the last page of the book: “ “Ex libris” / Giulio Paolini / 2023”
Private collection, Brescia
Arranged on an open book with blank pages are the torn fragments of several eighteenth-century plates – taken from a reprint of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie and featuring ancient machinery – while another fragment, from the same source, emerges between the pages of the book. Clearly visible in the middle is the image of an eye drawn by the Neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, in which the iris reproduces the interior of the theatre he designed for Besançon. The ensemble of images seems to be held down by the plaster cast of a hand, placed close to the book.
The Latin expression used for the title of the work literally refers to the gesture of the hand intent on keeping the fragments from falling out of the book, while in a figurative sense, by alluding to the meaning of an ex libris as the label identifying a book's owner, it harkens back to the hand and the eye as the distinctive "traits" of the artist, who wishes to see and touch an ungraspable dimension.
• Eye: engraving portraying the interior of the theatre at Besançon designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux; reproduction from Claude Nicolas Ledoux, L’Architecture 2 (Paris: 1804), p. 113.
• Printed plates: Recueil de planches de l’Encyclopédie, par ordre de matiéres (Paris: Chez Panckoucke, 1786), p. 181, plate 18.
