Niente e subito, 2006
GPO-0944
Nothing at Once
Plexiglas cases, plaster fragments
Two volumes: 91 x 91 x 91 cm, 31 x 31 x 31 cm, two volumes 61 x 61 x 61 cm each, overall dimensions 152 x 115 cm
The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas
Four transparent cubes of different sizes overlap one another so that they are askew: the largest one, set down on the ground, holds two smaller volumes and acts as a base for the fourth cube placed on top of it. Outside each volume, next to one of the sides, is a plaster fragment.
The empty volumes and the plaster fragments allude to a plastic object, which nonetheless seems exiled, eclipsed, in favour of a “nothing” that, on the contrary, is revealed “right now”, as the title tells us (a variation on the expression in Italian “tutto e subito” [everything and right now]). In the words of the artist: “The explosion (or implosion) of the object of the representation in the body of the ‘sculpture’. That nothing that is reduced to the subject of the work, immediately becomes its own exposition, however”.1
The same theme was developed in a previous variant, made in 2001 (GPO-0864), as well as in a version made in the same year that is distinguished by different components (GPO-0929).
| 2006-07 | New York, Yvon Lambert Gallery, L’autore sconosciuto (The Unknown Artist – L’auteur inconnu). Giulio Paolini, 14 December 2006 - 13 January 2007. |
| 2013 | Dallas, The Rachofsky House, Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, 1 February - 31 October, no catalogue. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. p. 253 (exhibition view New York 2006). |
