Giulio paolini biography of abraham

“The attention is analytical, but the result is enigmatic.” (Giulio Paolini)

Giulio Paolini has explored issues of control and comprehension using collage, perspective and quotation for much of his life. In “Nove particolari in due tempi (Nine Details in Two Stages),” Paolini’s appropriated image of the figure is not in the center, but off to the right. The perspectival lines are not connected to the right (writing/drawing) hand of the figure, but closer to the left eye and/or the raised left hand. In the overall composition, Paolini balances between centrifugal and centripetal forces where the left goes right, the right goes left and hierarchy (between artist, viewer, subject matter, source material and end result) is always in question.  Looking further at the figure, its image can be read as being taken from “the past” on account of its enlarged engraving-like lines (the image is taken from a seventeenth-century handbook about perspective, “Les Perspecteurs” by Abraham Bosse). The reproduced lines are contrasted by the rigidly clean and geometric rectangles on the other sheets of paper as well as by the straight but hand-drawn lines that unify the overall composition. In addition, the images of what can be read as clouds or the sea are also, visibly, reproductions (on account of their image-grain) and so, not only are they hazy on account of the imagery, but also on account of the images being multiple steps away from their source. Paolini’s use of reference expands the meaning of the work and also serves to acknowledge and focus on the idea of “reference” as a forever-morphing aspect of life.  Order (perspective, predetermined diagrams on each sheet showing the placement of each piece of paper in the overall composition, every sheet representing the scheme of the whole work) and chaos (the seemingly haphazard, strewn-about quality of the sh

May 13 – June 3, 2021

REMAKE; Sarah Charlesworth, Giulio Paolini, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Shellburne Thurber
Krakow Witkin Gallery

Virtual Viewing:
https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/exhibitions/remake-sarah-charlesworth-giulio-paolini-paul-mpagi-sepuya-and-shellburne-thurber-online-only/

An online presentation of four works over four weeks

Sarah Charlesworth’s “Verbs,” which is part of her iconic “Modern History” series, was made in 1978 (released by the artist in 2003) and is a black and white photographic print made from a masked-off newspaper, reproduced at its original scale with only photos, verbs and the masthead remaining visible. Through the selective removals, Charlesworth highlights the formal hierarchies of power as well as the visual results of editorial perspective.

In 2013, Lucy Gallun, a photo curator at MoMA, NY, wrote the following:

“What is “unwriting”? Is it an act of removal or addition? Of stitching or unraveling? Of narration, interpretation, or revision? “Unwriting” is the term that artist Sarah Charlesworth (American, 1947–2013) chose for the introductory notes of her 1979 catalogue, “Modern History”…

Charlesworth’s elimination of everything except these specific elements may actually create a stronger focus on the details that remain. We see them more clearly because of the absence around them—and this seeing is a different manner of seeing—it is an active sight. Indeed, with works in this series, we, the viewers, are given a kind of agency in the task of interpretation. Through the high contrast of reproductions against a wide white ground, we are struck immediately with impressions: the images are large or small, they appear above or below the fold, they take up central portions of the page or are relegated to the corners…

Charlesworth died in 2013, leaving a legacy of work that is elegant in both its execution and its inquisitive sub

This retrospective exhibition of Giulio Paolini’s art was a considerable achievement. To present 25 years of an artist’s work, including most of his major pieces, and respecting not only the evolution of his esthetic decisions but also their different manifestations over time—this is not the easiest of tasks, for the artist as for the curator. Paolini himself worked on the large catalogue, which presents most of his writings together with extensive documentation of his work. In the catalogue as in the show, the esthetic approach prevails over any didactic one.

Strangely, the most impressive part of the exhibition was that presenting Paolini’s early production. His work from the beginning of the ’70s on is well known, and while it is always interesting and rigorous, it does not surprise so much as it offers the secure feeling of a perfectly controlled artistic output. The work of the ’60s, however, which assures Paolini a leading position in the Italian art of the time, is less known.

Paolini’s work has always dealt with cultural structures and artistic or esthetic ideological processes, even if not directly through its iconographic elements. This remark almost suggests a questioning of the unity of the art, yet through the late ’60s the elements Paolini uses, pragmatically determined through perception and understanding, point to their own purest essence, avoiding any iconographical arbitrariness in order to bring out their original, basic arbitrariness, the ambiguity of their necessity. Paolini’s work, then, constitutes an analysis of the visual arts, and a critical, dialectical debate on their functions. Unlike post-Minimalist or conceptual work in northern Europe or America, Paolini’s art avoids formalism and any kind of psychological interest; its sociological aspects are immediately brought to a speculative level of quasi-metaphysical concern.

A form of tautology plays a role in

You May Also Like

Sponsored Products

More from this Dealer