Giulio Paolini | the artist

The artist Giulio Paolini
Born 1940, Genoa, Italy.

Lives and works in Turin.

Style and technique of the artist: Collage, Conceptual Art, Installation art, Sydney Biennale,

Biography and art, auction, artworks, interview, statement, website:

Original artworks, prints, exhibition posters, monographs, books, collectibles.

Was ist ein Kunstwerk – wie kommt der Künstler zu ihm, oder kommt es zum Künstler, weil es immer schon da ist? Seit seinem Disegno geometrico von 1960, das alle Bilder im Kern enthält, beschäftigt sich Giulio Paolini mit diesen Fragen, mit dem Verhältnis von Künstler und Werk, von Betrachter und Werk, und nicht zuletzt mit dem Sehen als konstitutivem Moment des Bildes…

Works

Works

Mimesi (Mimesis)

Summa copiosa

When I compare two identical copies of an ancient sculpture, I don’t want to be the author of those sculptures, but the observer that sees the distance that separates them, and catches all the possible relationships, or the lack of relationship, between them, and between that image and ourselves…

giulio paolini

The work of Giulio Paolini appeared on the art scene in the early Sixties, at a time when not only the visual arts, but also the literary culture and human sciences in general were examining themselves as if reflected in a mirror, tracing their physical traits back to a last constituent genetic mapping. It is difficult
to view the self-reflectivity of that period as a form of narcissism, as analytical as it may have been. However, introducing the word “passionate” to it may help us view Paolini’s work not as an act against representation but, on the contrary, as a gesture of love towards it, just as what underlay the
works of Roland Barthes, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino – and, indeed, was the source of the limpidity with which these writers deconstructed the literary language – was an act of love towards the rational understanding of life and towards literature…