{"id":101872,"date":"2020-08-21T12:03:19","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T10:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.castellodirivoli.org\/mostra\/giulio-paolini-le-chef-doeuvre-inconnu\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T10:24:32","slug":"giulio-paolini-le-chef-doeuvre-inconnu","status":"publish","type":"mostra","link":"https:\/\/www.castellodirivoli.org\/en\/mostra\/giulio-paolini-le-chef-doeuvre-inconnu\/","title":{"rendered":"Giulio Paolini. Le Chef-d\u2019oeuvre inconnu"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 15, 2020 \u2013 January 31, 2021
\nExhibition curated by Marcella Beccaria<\/strong>
\nSecond Floor, Rooms 18, 33, 32<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Castello di Rivoli Museo d\u2019Arte Contemporanea presents\u00a0Giulio Paolini \u201cLe Chef-d\u2019oeuvre inconnu\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 an original journey covering sixty years of artistic work through a three-part exhibition comprising a large number of new artworks. Developed in close contact with the artist\u00a0Giulio Paolini<\/strong>\u00a0(Genoa, 1940), the exhibition is curated by Castello di Rivoli Chief curator\u00a0Marcella Beccaria<\/strong>\u00a0and celebrates the artist\u2019s eightieth birthday.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Disegno geometrico<\/em>\u00a0(Geometric Drawing, 1960), which is the starting point of this new exhibition.<\/p>\n

Paolini\u2019s works are mirrors and lenses through which art reflects on itself. \u201cEver since his debut,\u201d writes Marcella Beccaria, \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of the exhibition, \u201cLe Chef-d\u2019oeuvre inconnu<\/em>\u201d (The Unknown Masterpiece), refers to a short story written by Honor\u00e9 de Balzac, first published in 1831. According to Paolini\u2019s method, the tribute to the short story reflects some of the crucial questions which his works raise. Through each of the artworks featured, the exhibition points to the elusive relationship between reality and representation, between an artwork and its image, between vision and artistic intentions, based on an investigation of the very essence of art.<\/p>\n

\u201cLe Chef-d\u2019oeuvre inconnu\u201d<\/em>\u00a0is also the title of the major new installation that greets visitors in the first room of the exhibition (Room 18<\/strong>). The historic work by Paolini,\u00a0Disegno geometrico<\/em>\u00a0(Geometric Drawing), 1960, is expanded three-dimensionally to comprise the entire gallery, transforming the small 1960 artwork into a new participatory place the audience can enter and linger in. The floor, the walls, and the space above house the elements that make up the compositional scheme of\u00a0Disegno geometrico<\/em>, from the rectangular structure to the red diagonals and the points originally marked with a compass to square the canvas and now marked by physical easels. In addition to\u00a0Disegno geometrico<\/em>\u00a0itself, the four walls of the room feature as many variations on this work, offering different possible ways of squaring a rectangular surface.<\/p>\n

The exhibition continues in the next gallery (Room 33<\/strong>), which the artist has called \u201cVertigo\u201d, to highlight the presence of works moving in space through time, like the protagonists of an unreleased film.\u00a0Vertigo<\/em>, 2020, the work which gives its name to the whole gallery, consists of an assemblage comprising a photographic image of the sky printed on a piece of fabric, a pallet and a photograph of a pallet, a number of frames and stretched canvases, empty stretchers, and two photographs with details of the work itself. The various elements seem to be dynamically flowing out of the old fireplace into the room, like entities whose existence predates the author\u2019s intervention. In addition to the installation\u00a0Vertigo<\/em>, 2020, the gallery hosts the new work\u00a0Omega (1948-2018)<\/em>, 2020, a rare occasion in which the artist includes details related to his own biographical history \u2013 his Omega watch worn from when he was 8 years old until 2018 when it stopped working.<\/p>\n

\u201cFine\u201d senza fine<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cThe End\u201d Without an End) is the theme which brings together the artworks exhibited in the third and last gallery of the exhibition (Room 32<\/strong>). Here Paolini explores the concept of continuous becoming and the unfathomable secret of artworks, which, even when they consist of apparently legible images, never betray their origin and cannot know their own fate.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Giulio Paolini\u00a0<\/strong>states \u201cDay after day, everything is renewed and repeats itself as the natural effect of the incessant becoming of things. In the Museum, by contrast, we can escape from the disquieting destiny marked by the passing of Time. This place seems to be caught in an eternity of its own: here hours, works, and people belong to an instant that lives and renews itself through the same enduring illusion: to hold the end of Time in a specific image. \u2018Everything flows,\u2019 as we know, yet nothing prevents us from turning our gaze elsewhere\u2014without a place or date.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the occasion of the exhibition, the Castello di Rivoli Museo d\u2019Arte Contemporanea is publishing a catalog in two volumes. One volume is dedicated to the poems written by Giulio Paolini, introduced by Andrea Cortellessa. The second volume includes additional writings by Paolini, his unpublished drawings and projects, a correspondence between Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and the artist, and an essay by the curator Marcella Beccaria. The catalog will be richly illustrated with images from the exhibition, and published in a bilingual edition (Italian and English).<\/p>\n

This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the contribution of Regione Piemonte<\/strong><\/p>\n

The exhibition is organized with the support of the Benefactors of the Museum: Andrea Ruben Levi, Nicoletta Fiorucci and Giuliana Setari<\/strong><\/p>\n

Special thanks to the Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin<\/strong><\/p>\n