Momenti della verità, 2022

The work conceived for the solo exhibition at the Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia develops across the four rooms of the gallery in episodes – "moments of Truth", the title tells us – that call into play the concept itself of exhibition, as well as the relationship between the author, the work, and the viewer.
The first room hosts a plexiglas model of the room itself, while outlined on the wall at the rear is the life-size profile of a male figure seen from behind. The figure seems to be moving beyond the boundaries of this first room: it is a stand-in for the artist and at the same time for the viewer. A plexiglas case arranged so that it corresponds to the upper part of the drawing alludes to the hypothetical painting that the figure is looking at, to the presumed work that an exhibition, by definition, announces. In the second room, two drawings, also square in format, reiterate the image of the figure seen from behind (or a detail of it). In the third room, two other drawings portray its partial profile, while a red pencil drawing outlines the orthogonal axes of the blank sheet, leaving the central area empty. In the fourth and last room, four elements placed close together compose an empty square which corresponds to the module of each of the squares encountered in the previous rooms; the figure seen from behind, on its part, traces back over its footsteps and heads towards the exit.
The exhibition path, characterized by a growing number of elements, but at the same time of increasingly rarefied images, culminates in a "stalemate": the author abandons the field and leaves on the scene an image without a face. An absence that leads back to the empty space encountered at the beginning, to the empty stage, which precedes everything that happens at the exhibition. In other words, to the space of the representation arranged to host any other mise-en-scène: the sole “Truth” that Giulio Paolini always revisits from scratch, starting from his first painting, Disegno geometrico, made in 1960 (GPO-0001).