L’arte di non esserci, 2018-19
GPO-1074
The Art of Not Being There
Pencil and collage on paper in plexiglas cases
Six plexiglas cases 100 x 70 cm each, overall dimensions 206 x 220 cm
Collection of the artist
The ensemble of six framed sheets in plexiglas cases, arranged at short intervals so as to form a painting, feature at the centre a male figure in coat-tails holding up a blank square (intended as a sheet or a blank canvas). Other squares outlined in pencil and several sheets with geometric studies, scattered all around, multiply and disperse, as if in a magic trick, the picture of a panting.
The protagonist hiding behind the “game of surfaces” is a stand-in for the artist, who deliberately subtracts himself from our gaze – as suggested by the title – in favour of the “theatre” of the work, its artifices, and its illusions or presumed becoming.
| 2019 | Paris, Galerie Marian Goodman, Giulio Paolini, 15 March - 11 May. |
| 2022 | Florence, Museo Novecento, Giulio Paolini. Quando è il presente?, 18 March - 7 September, col. repr. no. 7 pp. 14-15, repr. pp. 102-103 (exhibition view), col. repr. pp. 138-139 (exhibition view), entry by B. Della Casa and M. Disch p. 116, referred to in the text by B. Della Casa p. 62. |
| • | P. Maurette, “Con la mia arte e Borges cerco l’eternità”, in La Repubblica, 3 September 2022, col. repr. p. 39. |
| • | G. Paolini, Eccomi. Qui dove sono (Turin: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, 2025), col. repr. p. 87 (exhibition view Florence 2022). |
