Carte Noire, 1999

In the print arranged on the wall, the ensemble of nine plates reproduces, in the upper part, a male figure – his face remains off-scene – in precarious equilibrium on the intersection of the diagonals traced with coloured pencils. Eight reproductions of previous prints applied by the artist in random order, as if the actor-acrobat had allowed them to fall.
The title – borrowed from a well-known Italian coffee brand, whose logo is in the eighth plate at the bottom centre – literally refers to the black paper of the plates, and at the same time, in more implicit terms, it pays tribute to Marco Noire, the main publisher of Paolini's prints and multiples. Noire himself is recalled via the images of the eight prints, all of which printed by him1.
The original collage on which the print edition is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-02390. The same theme was formulated in two variants on paper, the former made during the same year (GPC-0942), the latter in 2007, with several supplementary images (GPC-1084).

1 The eight prints correspond, from left to right and from top to bottom, to the following titles: L’arte e lo spazio, 1983 (GPE-0041, two plates, held down by the protagonist), Come non detto, 1990 (GPE-0075), La città proibita, 1990 (GPE-0074), Cariatide, 1982 (GPE-0039), Il sole nero (dal mondo degli automi), 1993 (GPE-0091), Belvedere, 1990 (GPE-0072), and Esposizione universale, 1992 (GPE-0085).