Finale di partita, 2006

Sixteen elements of various sizes consisting of individual primed canvases or canvases mounted one atop the other, viewed from either the recto or the verso, are arranged inside a large square outlined on the wall. Some of the canvases feature a drawing of smaller individual squares or squares arranged in a grid. Along the horizontal median axis of this “chequerboard”, at equidistant intervals, are five plexiglas cases framing the canvases, or smaller squares drawn on the wall. Their format is repeated in the squares drawn to either side of the “chequerboard”, they too organized in a modular pattern.
The ensemble of canvases, squares, and cases is designated by the title – taken from a play by Samuel Beckett – as the endgame in chess. The players involved are the author in a duel with himself as he attempts to find the decisive move that will cause the elements of the game (the work in progress) to converge in a finished painting. The chequerboard – a recurring image in Paolini’s work (cf. GPO-0735, GPO-0757) – can indeed be seen as a metaphor for the worktable on which the author moves his pieces as he searches for the balancing point where everything is self-configured in a work. A permanent building site, renewed from one work to the next, which delays the fulfilment ad infinitum, thus favouring the game itself, that is, conjecture and a series of hypotheses.