Terra di nessuno, 2005
GPO-0901
No Man’s Land
Plexiglas sheets, metal trestles, chair, black pencil, paper elements
Two plexiglas sheets 160 x 80 cm each, overall dimensions 105 x 180 x 180 cm
Dismantled work
• 2005, Winterthur, Kunstmuseum: installation with a wooden chair; the scattered sheets include the drawing of an orbital structure (also used, among other things, in the work made during the same year entitled In ascolto (stanza dello spettatore), GPO-0898); the pencil was pointed downwards.
• 2009, Naples, Alfonso Artiaco: installation with a grey metal chair featuring an artificial white resin seat; nineteen sheets measuring 30 x 30 cm each, include a drawing of the outline of the artist’s open hand close to the pencil (in this case oriented upwards).
Two easels topped by two plexiglas sheets make up a table, accompanied by a chair. At the centre of the support surface is a black pencil oriented upwards, associated with the profile of the artist’s hand outlined on a sheet, which in the central area features a cut-out square. Scattered all around – on the table, the chair, and the floor – are blank sheets, they too square in shape (the ones on the table feature outlined squares, which are tilted with respect to the sides of the sheet and are mostly incomplete).
The chair, the pencil, and the hand are the clues of the author, seated at his work-table, as he attempts to fix something that is constantly escaping him, as indicated by the sheets on the table and the floor. The workshop of works in progress, this work recalls the planning condition in which nothing is definitive and everything is possible: a “no man’s land”, as indicated in the title, where the images are still seeking their own identity and the author navigates adrift, awaiting a revealing sign on the horizon. Akin to a still image of a work in fieri, this work stages the moment when, via the symbolic relationship between the hand and the pencil, the eventuality is announced that a work can be made manifest to the author-viewer’s gaze.
| 2005 | Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Giulio Paolini. Esposizione universale, 23 April - 24 June, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 21 p. 88, col. repr. n. pag. (exhibition view), referred to in the text by D. Schwarz p. 23. |
| 2009 | Naples, Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Giulio Paolini. Questo e/o quel quadro, 27 March - 9 May. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Esposizione Universale, photo shoot of the solo exhibition in Winterthur 2005, in Lotus 125 (Milan), September, 2005, col. repr. pp. 72-73. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. p. 242 (exhibition view Winterthur 2005). |
