L’opera autentica, 2002
GPO-0870
The Authentic Artwork
Pencil on primed canvas, easels, plexiglas sheet, steel cable, white-painted wooden platform
Four canvases and plexiglas sheet 60 x 60 cm each, platform 15 x 350 x 350 cm, overall dimensions 250 x 350 x 350 cm
Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como
In the presence of other works – in the context of a group exhibition – the artist suggests arranging the work inside a drywall structure (whose base is the same size as the platform), fastened by steel cables in order to isolate it from the surrounding space.
• 2002, Como, Fondazione Antonio Ratti: the artist installed the work inside a plasterboard and steel cable structure in order to isolate it from the surrounding space.
Four easels are arranged around the four sides of a white platform, each of which supporting a primed canvas. At the centre of the platform, a plexiglas sheet hanging from the ceiling wavers at the height of the canvases. On each canvas, a pencil drawing reproduces one or more positions of the transparent sheet that is moving ever so slightly.
“Copies from the real” of a constantly changing “model", the transcriptions on the canvases are both authentic and hypothetical: recordings of true instants, they manifest the pure hypotheses of a dimension that escapes a definitive representation. The mobile sheet is an unattainable and unfathomable entity, the mysterious soul of the work, intelligible only through the moments – observable and real but potentially unlimited – represented on the canvases.
The same theme, formulated in simpler terms in a first version made in 2001 (GPO-0862), was further developed in a variant with the same name developed in 2006 (GPO-0949).
| 2002 | Como, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Giulio Paolini. L’opera autentica, 26 July - 8 September, col. repr. pp. 38-48 and on cover (detail, exhibition views), artist’s writing p. 39, text by A. Vettese pp. 26-31 (catalogue published in 2003). |
| 2005 | Como, Broletto, Generations of art. 10 anni alla FAR. Decennale del Corso Superiore di Arte Visiva diretto da Annie Ratti, 1 May - 10 July, repr. p. 62 (exhibition view Como 2002). |
| 2005-06 | Rome, Villa Poniatowski, Divina Mimesis. Un omaggio di Giulio Paolini, Rosemarie Trockel e Cy Twombly a Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante e Pier Paolo Pasolini, 27 October 2005 - 29 January 2006, col. repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Como 2005). |
| 2009 | Como, Villa Sucota, Open Mind(s). Collezionismo comasco nel contemporaneo 1978-2008, 7 May - 28 June, in the exhibition catalogue col. repr. p. 65 (exhibition view Como 2005); in the exhibition magazine cited in the checklist of exhibited works pp. 13 e 23, col. repr. (exhibition view Como 2005). |
| 2017-18 | Mantua, Palazzo Te, Il tessuto come arte: Antonio Ratti imprenditore e mecenate, 1 October 2017 - 7 January 2018, touring to: Rome, Terme di Diocleziano, 14 March - 20 May 2018, not repr. |
| 2020-21 | Como, Villa Olmo, Il sogno di Antonio. Un viaggio tra arte e tessuto, 10 October 2021 - 20 February 2022, col. repr. p. 10 (exhibition view Rome 2018), entry by M. Disch with a quote from the artist p. 10. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with C. Gatti, in La Repubblica (Milan edition), 28 July 2002, p. IX. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Quaderni del Corso Superiore di Arte Visiva, Como, Fondazione Antonio Ratti (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2003), p. 39. |
| • | G. Di Pietrantonio, “Giulio Paolini. L’enigma della verità”, in Flash Art 36, no. 237 (Milan, Italian edition), December 2002-January 2003, col. repr. p. 70 (exhibition view Como 2003). |
| • | G. Paolini, Quattro passi. Nel museo senza muse (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2006), repr. p. 57 (exhibition view Como 2005). |
| • | R. Read, “The Dyastolic Rhythm of the Gallery: Copies, Originals, and Reversed Canvases”, in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 10, no. 1 (Brisbane), 2010, pp. 73, 75, 77, repr. p. 74 (exhibition view Como 2005). |
| • | Identità dell’architettura italiana, (Parma: Edizioni Diabasis 2018), repr. p. 13 (exhibition view Como 2002). |
