Qui dove sono, 2018-19
GPO-1097
Here Where I Am
Pencil and collage on paper
Six framed parts 66 x 86 cm each, overall dimensions variable
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso of the sixth element, centre: “ “Qui dove sono” / Giulio Paolini / 2018-19”
Private collection
• 2020, Milan, Galleria Stein: the elements were arranged in a single row, interrupted by a glass pane (three elements on each side of the window, with the third and fourth elements in contact with the window frame).
The six collages each offer an ancient or modern view of Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Turin – a pencil drawing is used to prolong the perspective beyond the edges of the rectangle that contains each image – associated each time with other figurative inserts from different times and of different origins. These include an astrolabe, a globe, the entrance hallway of the artist’s home, figures seen from behind in the foreground in the role of observers (as well as serving as stand-ins for the artist) and two protagonists borrowed from paintings by Giorgio de Chirico.
The scenic Turin square – which is where the artist resides – becomes the ideal theatre for the mise-en-scène of illusory perspectival visions, multiplications, and mises-en-abîme, spatiotemporal adjacencies and juxtapositions, that is, for the artifices and the illusions implicit in the very dimensions of the representation.
• Third element, figure: Giorgio de Chirico, L’enigma di una giornata, 1914, oil on canvas, 83 x 130 cm, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo.
• Fifth element, figure: portrait of Giulio Paolini taken by Salvatore Mazza, 1993.
• Sixth element, figure: Giorgio de Chirico, La partenza degli Argonauti, 1920, tempera on canvas, 54 x 73 cm, Collezione Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte Collection. Long-term loan at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli.
• Third and sixth elements: view of the entrance hallway of Giulio Paolini’s home taken by Paolo Mussat Sartor, 1991.
• Second, fourth and fifth elements: views portraying Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Turin.
• First, third, fourth and sixth elements: background image from Davide Bertolotti, L’Italia pittoresca e descritta (Turin: Giuseppe Pomba e C., 1838), plate 304 (”Piazza Vittorio Emanuele a Torino”).
| 2020-21 | Milan, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini. Qui dove sono, 30 September 2020 - 30 January 2021. |
| • | G. Micciché, “Giulio Paolini. Tre mostre per 80 anni”, in Millennium, monthly enclosed with the daily newspaper Il fatto quotidiano 4, no. 38, September, 2020, p. 114. |
