Giulio Paolini. LE CHEF-D’ŒUVRE INCONNU
Castello di Rivoli 2020
English translation of the catalogue by Scriptum
Il Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea organizza Giulio Paolini “Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu”. Developed in close contact with the artist Giulio Paolini (Genoa, 1940), the exhibition is curated by Castello di Rivoli Chief curator Marcella Beccaria and celebrates the artist’s eightieth birthday. One of the pioneers of the Italian art movement Arte Povera, with whom he shares the use of everyday materials and an interest in the phenomenological relationship between visitors, artworks, and the site of the exhibition space, Paolini foreshadowed the developments of conceptual art through his first artwork Disegno geometrico (Geometric Drawing, 1960), which is the starting point of this new exhibition. Paolini’s works are mirrors and lenses through which art reflects on itself. “Ever since his debut,” writes Marcella Beccaria, “the artist has focused on the ideal and material foundations of art, on the space of the studio and on the occasion of the exhibition as settings in which art is produced and displayed. His work often includes quotations and fragments drawn from the great catalog of the history of art, as well as reformulations of his own works in new contexts. For the artist, the act of seeing constitutes a crucial moment of knowledge-formation, whose truth is nevertheless always relative and subject to constant re-evaluation. Works can provide ideas for subsequent works and new displays in an endless cycle.”