Locus Solus, 1975
GPO-0322
Photo print applied to wooden panel
123 x 123 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso, upper left: “Giulio Paolini / “Locus Solus” / 1975”
Collection of the artist
The photograph applied to a wooden panel reproduces a portrait of Raymond Roussel sixty-four times. The portrait is in turn divided into sixty-four square modules, akin to a chequerboard. Indeed, the photographic image illustrates the sixty-four elements making up the multiple Locus Solus (1975, GPE-0020)1 .
A chequerboard made up of chequerboards, Locus Solus sets its own image en abîme, allowing the viewer to glimpse the semblances of an unattainable subject, capturing the gaze in the chimerical optical instability of the multiplied images.
1 The multiple is made up of the screen print reproduction of Roussel's portrait – divided grid-like into sixty-four units alternating from dark to light – on a panel 36 x 36 cm in size, as if it were an actual chequerboard.
• Portrait of Raymond Roussel from the cover of Dedicato a Raymond Roussel e alle sue “Impressioni d’Africa”, edited by Cesare Ripa di Meana and Sabina Zanon Dal Bo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1964).
• Title from Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1914).
| 1984 | Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Musée, Giulio Paolini, 20 January - 18 March, vol. Images/Index, repr. p. 48 (erroneously dated “1975”). |
| 1985-86 | Montreal, Musée d’art contemporain, Giulio Paolini, 7 July - 8 September, touring to: Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, 29 November 1985 - 19 January 1986, same catalogue as for the solo exhibition in Villeurbanne 1984. |
| 1986 | Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Giulio Paolini, 15 February - 30 March, same catalogue as for the solo exhibition in Villeurbanne 1984. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Le “opere a venire”, proceedings of the meeting with the artist, Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci”, Perugia, 28 April 1981 (Perugia: 1982),, p. 15. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1980, repr. p. 32. |
| • | Luoghi del silenzio imparziale, exhibition catalogue [In labirinto], Milan, Palazzo della Permanente (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1981), repr. p. 113. |
| • | L. Busine, Les Doublures de Giulio Paolini (Brussels: Edition Lebeer-Hossmann, 1986), p. 40, repr. p. 32 (correct caption on p. 30). |
| • | B. Corà, “L’artista? Un acrobata!”, in G. Paolini, Ancora un libro (Rome: Editrice Inonia, 1987), p. 7 (in general on the work and on the multiple titled Locus solus), not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini al Palazzo della Ragione, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Salone del Palazzo della Ragione (Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1995), repr. p. 24. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), repr. p. 245 on top. |
| • | Vis à vis. Autoritrarsi d’artista, exhibition catalogue, Nuoro, MAN Museo d’arte Provincia di Nuoro, 2002, repr. p. 92. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 322 p. 331, repr. (erraneously dated “1976”). |
| • | B. Satre, Giulio Paolini. Essere o non essere, 1994-95. In collezione 1 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2014), p. 16, repr. p. 15 (erraneously dated “1976”). |
| • | I. Bernardi, Giulio Paolini. Opere su carta: un laboratorio gestuale per la percezione dell’immagine (Turin: Prinp Editore, 2017), p. 146, repr. p. 147 (erraneously dated “1976”). |
