Anagramma, 1977

Four square sheets with a white background are applied at equidistant intervals on an alternate montage of texts and images relative to Paolini's activity.1 The four blank sheets featuring a typographical square just inside the perimeter and divided horizontally in half, each offer a text. The first sheet, at the top left, announces its own description in black letters, “Foglio I” (Sheet I); the second one, in clockwise order, presents the expressions “A Lato AB B” (A Side AB B, top) and “Riga C” (Line C, bottom) in off-white letters; the third and fourth sheets, with off-white and black lettering, bear the words “Catalogo” (Catalogue) and “Bibliografia” (Bibliography), which, via the chromatic distinction of the letters, offers the anagram of the texts of the first two sheets (the letters in black compose the expression “Foglio I”, while the ones in off-white the text of the second sheet).
As is often the case in Paolini, the work is based on the juxtaposition between systematic rigour and tautological logic that implodes within itself. On the one hand, the grid-like order, the regularity of the modular scan, the chronological sequence of the images from 1961 to 1975, the typographical rigour; on the other, the tautological text, the anagram, the enigmatic components, the nonsense. In the discrepancy between the two incongruous moments lies the key to interpretation. If the apparent logic defines a principle of succession, development, consequentiality – in the evolution of this specific work, of the works in general, and of one's career – for Paolini, in fact, all the works correspond as though they were the interchangeable tiles in an ever-changing mosaic, or like the letters in an anagram that, when given a different place originate different words. In other words, the "catalogue" of works realized and the "bibliography" that describes them underlies a single dimension, which is always equal to itself: that dimension that was expressed from the artist's very first work, Disegno geometrico (1960, GPO-0001), reproduced in the central image, thus suggesting that everything begins from that original nucleus, the potential container of any other image.

1 The pages were taken from the following publications: G. Paolini, Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), pp. 42, 43, 66, VII; Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Galleria dell’Ariete, 1966, n. pag. (text by C. Lonzi, untitled); G. Celant, Giulio Paolini (New York: Sonnabend Press, 1972), p. 112; Giulio Paolini (Parma: Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Università di Parma, 1976) pp. 165, 167, 34, 86, 91; T. Trini, "Giulio Paolini. Come l’immaginario si ribella all’immaginazione", in Data 20 (Milan), March-April, 1976, p. 90.