CASTELLO DI AMA
2002: Giulio Paolini
Paradigma
Paradigma (Paradigm) is a powerful, explicit title which invites immediate
attention. In an almost oxymoronic manner, we would like to view it
above all as a paradigm of discretion, a quality discernible in this
work and embodied by Giulio Paolini, the individual and the artist,
in what seems today to be a rare fashion. In a beautiful, lush landscape
of hills and vineyards, the triumph of Bacchus and Dionysius, he has
chosen in Apollonean fashion to install his work in an out-of-the-way
little room that needs refurbishing. Of course, the room is now entirely
filled by the work, but discretion demands as much tact and reserve
as it does discernment, precision and decisiveness.
Paolini has grasped – and indeed incorporated into his credo
– that it is the artist’s condition itself which requires
discretion, suspended as it is between the creation of what is a virtually
useless object and at the same time constantly liable to be taken
as a model or symbol, in other words a paradigm. He has never stopped
exploring the role of art and the artist, which for him disappears
– unembodied – into the folds of the work, a play of mirrors,
cuts and reflections, of oppositions and settings, in which meaning
and authorship circulate without allowing themselves to be pinned
down and fixed.
It is a strange condition, at once classical and fluctuating, and
over time has inspired the attribution of an incredibly diverse range
of interpretations and influences. Situated as it is «between»
styles, his work is cited in relation to analytic painting but also
to Arte Povera, conceptualism, the post-modern generation, hypermannerism
and so on. But Paolini is Paolini, a centre that is invisible and
ungraspable but to which all the facets and lines of the work and
the works refer.
Paradigma is a parallelepiped of stone slabs in a metal frame, in
which can be seen two equivalent parts, one on top of the other. The
lower part is closed and impenetrable to the eye, opaque and solid;
while it is as if the upper one has exploded, disseminating fragments
everywhere – on the framework, which is visible and open to
view, and in the room where the sculpture is sited. The contrast is
very clear-cut, and indeed it is precisely for this reason that one
sees more clearly that the slabs forming the faces of the lower section
are in fact a little set in from the frame, as if they were imploding.
But that is not all. The width and height of the structure have the
same dimensions as the door of the room, or rather of the opening,
which depending on the direction you are moving in is the entrance
or the exit. Hence we can imagine that what the explosion has made
visible inside the upper section, namely its structure, is also bearing
the implosive tendency of the lower part. Indeed, we must, because
the clear presence of a centre indicated by the diagonals of the upper
section makes us think that there must be another one in the lower
one. Two centres, a dual structure, this is the evident paradigm:
the division, the constant referring, the sense of separation and
union, the invisible and conceptual spaces – «different»,
one might say, adopting the Derridean terminology used by Paolini
at the beginning of his career – opened by cuts and references,
where the author and the meaning hide, originate and are authenticated
at the same time, that is they find «origin and authenticity
– if not uniqueness», as the artist has recently reaffirmed.
But what is ultimately most surprising about this work is its simplicity
(not a customary feature of Paolini’s recent works), bordering
on «abstraction» one might think, or even «minimalism».
At first, before discovering the title of the work, it seemed it could
simply be a stage in his development, when, for instance one says
that an artist is going through a more abstract or a more figurative,
a more minimalist or a more expressionist phase. But having seen the
title, the suspicion is that this work is a «paradigm»
in the same way that his 1960 work, Disegno geometrico (Geometric
design), was, the squaring of the canvas. Paradigma could almost be
an updated, three-dimensional installation version. What is traced
here is the structure of the sides, diagonals and centre of three-dimensionality,
ready to house any object or event, indeed in itself the originator
of the possibilities of objects and events. What’s more, there
is the division-multiplication by two, which removes self-referentiality
from the operation and creates the folds of the play of references.
Is Paolini pointing then to a new beginning? Or does he want to supply
the retrospective paradigm of his work? We succumb briefly and discreetly
to rhetoric: could the paradigm also be a possible alternative response
– and for that reason more abstract and formal – to the
icon, a network of media symbolism and communication?
This is probably an exaggeration. Maybe it is the atmosphere of the
place, perhaps the desire for a good omen, or something else again.
It matters little. Only the discreet really exaggerate.
Elio Grazioli