Vedo (la decifrazione del mio campo visivo), 2003
GPO-0881
I See (The Deciphering of My Visual Field)
Primed canvas, plexiglas case, fragments of torn xerox reproduction, black pencil, collage on wall
Case 100 x 130 cm, canvas 50 x 65 cm, overall dimensions variable
Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia
• 2003, Milan, Fondazione Prada: the extension of the work on the wall corresponded to the actual limits of the visual field (225 x 375 cm), marked at each end with a compass.
• 2012, Brescia, Galleria Massimo Minini: the extension of the work was reduced in proportion to the dimensions of the wall available, and therefore the number of fragments were clearly fewer in number; the artist declared his interest in the gesture of the hand rather than in the breadth of the visual field.
Through the central hole of the plexiglas case, a black pencil attempts to come into contact with the blank canvas – hanging inside the case – without actually touching it, however. At the same time, the pencil pierces the tip of the pencil depicted in the torn image, applied to the outer side of the case, which reproduces the hand of the artist as he makes the work Vedo (la decifrazione del mio campo visivo) (GPO-0188) for the first time, on 15 July 1969.1 All around the case, other fragments scatter on the wall more details of the same photographic image.
The new formulation of Vedo rediscovers the gesture of the hand from 1969, but shifting the attention away from the “deciphering” of the visual field at the moment of the presumed contact between the pencil and the canvas, that is, the instant that immediately foreshadows the becoming of an image.
1 As concerns the work, Paolini has observed as follows: “Vedo is the abstract and conceptual scheme of vision, it is the translation into figures of the phenomenon of seeing. In this work I traced countless pencil marks on the wall corresponding to the ‘quantity’ of space that I had before me”. (G. Paolini interviewed by A. Bonito Oliva, in Paolini: opere 1961/73, exhibition catalogue, Studio Marconi, Milan 1973, n. pag.).
| 2003 | Milan, Fondazione Prada, Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, 29 October - 18 December, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 403, not repr. |
| 2012 | Brescia, Galleria Massimo Minini, Giulio Paolini, 14 January - 10 March. |
| 2018 | Angera, Rocca di Angera, Ala Scaligera, Continuum, 8 April - 30 September, col. repr. pp. 15, 58-59 (exhibition views, cited with incorrect dimensions “225 x 374 cm”). |
