Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore, 2008
GPE-0117
Immaculate Conception. Without Title / Without Author
Die-cut lithograph and collage
62 x 50 cm
Signed on the recto, bottom right: “Giulio Paolini”
Autograph numbering on the recto, bottom left
100 in Arabic numerals from 1/100 to 100/100
30 in Roman numerals from I/XXX to XXX/XXX
Danilo Montanari Editore, Ravenna
Grafiche Morandi, Fusignano (Ravenna)
The print was produced by Danilo Montanari Editore, Ravenna, on the occasion of the solo exhibition Giulio Paolini. Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore held at the Studio G7; Bologna, from 19 January to 8 March 2008.
Double-sided two-flap grey card stock folder, closed format 63 x 51 x 1 cm; on the front board titles in black (author, title, publisher). Contains the plate and a sheet of tracing paper with a text by the author and the colophon at the bottom.
Includes information regarding the text by the artist, edition size, publisher, place and date of printing (Ravenna, January 2008).
Text by the artist, Immacolata concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore, extract from the eponymous text published in the exhibition catalogue Giulio Paolini. Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore, Bologna, Studio G7, 2008, pp. 20-22.
The image held by the two photographic hands, applied by collage, reproduces an ocular cavity that inscribes the visual field of the observer, reclining in a room and intent on drawing, as suggested by the pencil in the left hand and the image of the same room he holds before himself. A blank rectangle, inserted in the area corresponding to the figure, duplicates the idea of a drawing as it is being made, and acts as the generating nucleus of a multitude of "sheets" gradually reduced in format, as if they were drawings gradually released by the author. The multiplication can also be found in the rectangles outlined in pencil on the "sheets" of the photographic image.
In this game of correspondences, the gazes of the reproduced figure, of the author, and of the viewer (we who watch from behind the ocular cavity) are identified in a single gaze, captured in its own becoming, and the actual subject of the work. In the artist's own words: “Vision is as if circumscribed, framed, caught by surprise off-stage, from behind the eye of the figure that watches and is watched. His gaze and our gaze overlap and coincide in the putting into focus of the sheet that, he and we, are looking at: the object and subject of a forced vision: I watch myself and watch myself watching".1
The original collage, made in December 2007, on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-2481. The same theme was reformulated in several original variants, made using unnumbered copies of the print (GPC-1100, GPC-1131, GPC-1129, GPC-1758).
1 G. Paolini, Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore, in Risonanze #2. Giulio Paolini e Fabio Vacchi, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Spazio Risonanze, Auditorium Parco della Musica (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), p. 76.
Image at the centre from Conrad G. Mueller, Mae Rudolph et al., Luce e visione (Milan: Mondadori, 1968), p. 149.
| 2008-09 | Siegen, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Blickmaschinen oder wie Bilder entstehen. Die zeitgenössische Kunst schaut auf die Sammlung Werner Nekes, 23 November 2008 - 10 May 2009, touring to: Budapest, Kunsthalle Budapest and C3 Center for Culture & Communication Foundation (Pillanatgépek), 20 June - 23 August 2009; Siviglia, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Máquinas de Mirar), 17 September - 22 November 2009, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 289, repr. pp. 67, 289; edition 79/100. |
| 2011 | Bologna, Aula Magna della Biblioteca Universitaria, Libro / Opera. Viaggio nelle pagine d'artista. La collezione di Danilo Montanari, 16 September - 12 October, repr. p. 165. |
| 2014 | Bologna, Studio G7, Giulio Paolini. Opera grafica e collage, 20 September - 15 November. |
| 2014 | L’Aquila, MUSPAC Museo Sperimentale Arte Contemporanea, L’immaginazione al potere 1968-1978, 11-25 October 2014, no catalogue; edition 25/100. |
| 2017 | L’Aquila, MUSPAC Museo Sperimentale Arte Contemporanea, Il “Terrae motus” dell’arte nella “Magnifica Citade”, 23 August - 3 September, no catalogue; edition 25/100. |
| 2019 | L’Aquila, MUSPAC Museo Sperimentale Arte Contemporanea, Under Construction #1. Collezione permanente, 20 October -10 November, no catalogue; edition 25/100. |
| • | G. Paolini, “Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore”, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, Studio G7 (Bologna: Damiani editore, 2008), p. 25, in Italian and English; republished in a revised version Risonanze #2. Giulio Paolini & Fabio Vacchi, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Spazio Risonanze, Auditorium Parco della Musica (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), p. 77, in Italian and English. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, Studio G7 (Bologna: Damiani editore, 2008), p. 25 (text by the artist Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore), repr. pp. 20, 24. |
| • | Risonanze #2. Giulio Paolini & Fabio Vacchi, Rome, Spazio Risonanze, Auditorium Parco della Musica (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), p. 77 (text by the artist Immacolata Concezione. Senza titolo / Senza autore, revised version), repr. p. 76. |
| • | Mu6 3, no. 8 (L’Aquila: Associazione degli Amici dei Musei d’Abruzzo), second quarter, 2008, repr. n. pag. |
| • | A. Bellini, “Giulio Paolini. Autoriflessivo”, in Flash Art 42, no. 275 (Milan, Italian edition), April-May, 2009, col. repr. p. 68. |
| • | R. Ferrario, Giulio Paolini. Un viaggio a distanza (Busto Arsizio: Nomos Edizioni, 2009), repr. p. 24. |
| • | Che fare? Arte povera – Die historischen Jahre, exhibition catalogue, Vaduz, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2010), p. 22, repr. |
