Phoenix, 1992

The nine silkscreens arranged to resemble a large painting reproduce, in the foreground, to the sides, two valets wearing theatre costumes, each of which holding a square image, representing a detail of an astronomical map.1 The two squares are aligned with a third square of the same size, which is empty and outlined in the middle plate. In the background, two other pairs of valets, proportionally reduced and aligned with each other, double the same scene. The first pair stands out inside the two astronomical squares and holds a small white square; the second pair is located in the central plate, and also holds the detail of a star chart. At the centre of this sequence of valets – as well as at the centre of the entire composition – is a small cut-out square.
A reading of the image underlies an intricate alternation between opposing compositional planes: on the one side, the dizzying vanishing point construction towards the central cut-out, on the other side, the horizontal alignment of valets and squares at the level of the optical axis. In one as well as in the other, the cut-out square at the centre, the focal point of the composition, brings the gaze back to the surface, to the level of the image. Akin to the diagonals, which, on the one hand, square the surface of the whole, and, on the other, correspond to the vanishing lines of the perspective.
On a semantic level, the central vanishing point recalls the horizon of the constellations that the gaze can admire only from afar, like a drawing of unequalled perfection, at an incommensurable distance. A wonderful vision, announced by the silent and discreet valets to the sides of the scene, in the role of stand-ins for the author, who steps aside to leave the field for the perspective of an image entrusted to the artifices of representation.2 An imaginary dimension, proper to art, that the artist constantly calls into play, as suggested by the constellations of Pictor and Sculptor, as well as by the choice of the title, which alludes to the symbology of the Phoenix, the emblem of immortality and of the perennial rebirth from its ashes.
The print iconographically corresponds to the silkscreen print with the same title, made that same year as a single sheet (GPE-0090).
In 2007 the artist made an original variant on paper integrated with a pair of supplementary valets (Senza titolo (da Phoenix), 1992-2007, GPC-1086).

1 The detail to the left includes the constellation Pictor (Painter), the one to the right the constellations of Sculptor and Phoenix.
2 As concerns the valet, introduced by Paolini in his work in 1983 as a stylized figure and in 1986 in a photographic version, see the prints Trionfo della rappresentazione, 1984 (GPE-0051), Dal Trionfo della rappresentazione (cerimoniale: l’artista è assente), 1986 (GPE-0058), Passe-partout, 1988 (GPE-0066), and Contemplator enim, 1991 (GPE-0080).