Progetto, 2022
GPE-0157
Project
Lithograph
Fedrigoni Old Mill
30 x 30 cm
Signed on the recto, bottom right: “Giulio Paolini”
Handwritten numbering, not by the artist, on the recto, bottom left
35 in Arabic numerals from 1/35 to 35/35
20 in Roman numerals from I/XX to XX/XX
Edizioni l’Obliquo, Brescia
Grafica Sette Srl and Seven Media, Bagnolo Mella (Brescia)
The print was produced by Edizioni l’Obliquo, Brescia – directed by Giorgio Bertelli – on the occasion of the publication of the poem Projet (1969) by Raymond Queneau, edited by Pasquale Di Palmo. The third graphic portfolio produced by Bertelli with Paolini in 2022, completes the trilogy dedicated to a twentieth-century French writer (cf. Il pastore al suo padrone, GPE-0152 and Nodo scorsoio, GPE-0155); in February 2023 the publisher offered the three portfolios included in a case, for which ten copies were made.
Double-sided white card stock folder, with inside pocket, closed format 30.5 x 30.5 cm; cover with titles in red and black (title, authors, curator, publisher). Contains a title-page (on the recto the same as the cover, but with the title in black, on the verso acknowledgements and copyright), a sheet with a poem by Raymond Queneau (in French and in Italian), a sheet with a note by Pasquale di Palmo, the print, and the colophon.
Includes information regarding the edition size, printer, type of paper, place and date of printing (31 December 2022). Numbering bottom centre.
• Poem by Raymond Queneau, Project (1969).
• Note by Pasquale di Palmo referring to the poem by Queneau and reference to the edition as the third publishing collaboration between Paolini and Edizioni l’Obliquo in 2022.
The photographic reproduction set against the middle ground illustrates a complex intersecting of linear structures that recall two or more polyhedrons fitted one inside the other, viewed in perspective; the drawing is used to make some of the sides appear longer. This illustration is overlapped by the images of eight faces of circular clocks, of varying sizes, oriented differently and with different hours, and arranged to correspond to the vertices or points of intersection of the geometric structures.
The intricate intersecting of linear axes and orthogonal angles, combined with the rotatory dynamic of the clocks, the ambiguity of the spatial planes, and the complicity of the optical illusions generates an inextricable perceptive situation, which annuls any point of reference. The clocks, which are incoherent amongst themselves, suspend univocal time, just as the intersecting of the volumetric structures disrupts the original spatial coordinates. From the logic of the individual elements to the labyrinthine image of the whole the artifices of representation are made manifest in all their enigmatic uniqueness.
The title is inspired by that of the poem by Raymond Queneau contained in the portfolio.
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-2220.
Image of the timepiece from Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Robert Clairborne, Quarta dimensione: tempo (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1967), p. 8 (”L’ora ufficiale americana”).
| 2026 | Cesena, Galleria del Ridotto, La forma del libro / La forma del mondo, 21 March - 3 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 82, col. repr. no. 32 p. 81; artist’s proof. |
