Giulio Paolini
Senza titolo, 1974
collage on paper, 46 × 33 cm
Paolini's art consists of a metalinguistic investigation carried out with the very tools of the system, painting, which he intends to analyze. The spirit of the research does not change in the Senza titolo of 1974, however broadening the field of investigation: not only the tools of painting, but the structures of representation and the operational context of artistic production. Here Paolini plays, as often happens to him, with an irony that borders on the rompe-l'esprit: in a black and white photograph, a hand leans towards us and offers us that same hand , printed on another photograph which is physically crumpled in the center of the first. The game between representation and reality, between fiction and truth, is evident, which – as always in Paolini – has no solution, other than his own mise en abyme.
from: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro. La Collezione permanente, exhibition catalogue, edited by G. Verzotti, A. Vettese, Milano, Skira, 2007, p. 177-178.
