Mnemosine, 1980

Nine sheets of drawing paper feature the drawing of the same number of sheets seen in perspective, as well as the nine letters of the name Mnemosine [Mnemosyne], the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses. The sequence of letters written in red pencil so that they get smaller and smaller begins on the first sheet, with the initial letter written at the top left, while the development of the pencil drawing begins on the second sheet, with the image in perspective of the previous sheet. Time after time the letters and the four-sided shapes move away towards infinity, until the writing and the drawing coincide with the vanishing point on the last sheet. The first sheet, which is partially wrapped by the other sheets, also bears traces of burning along one side ("fire, in the beginning, as birth and the discovery of a word "1), while drawn on the verso of the last sheet is a garland of laurel leaves.
The installation requires placing the first sheet on the floor, hanging the last one from the ceiling, and a variable distribution, depending on the space available, of the other elements on one or more walls, with the laurel leaves arranged on the ground in random order, in the area corresponding to the first hanging element. At the centre of the wall, a horizontal sequence of nine linear rectangles, of the same size as the sheets, creates a dialectical relationship with the latter, as if to indicate their "source" or their model, or to suggest another vision of the nine components of the work.
The collage arranged on a music stand and seen as a "title-page" or the announcement of a "story" developed over sheets arranged all around, is made up of the association of two antique drawings: two Muses and a didactic table with nine numbers illustrating the "real way to hold a pen" when writing. In the central part, written in red pencil once more are the nine letters of the name Mnemosine.
The basic theme of the work – which was previously formulated on a canvas made a few months earlier (GPO-0420) – is in fact the dispersion of a subject that subtracts itself from the gaze: in the perspectival drawing developed from one sheet to another, neither the progression of the rectangles nor the name Mnemosyne succeed in creating an image that is legible as a whole. In a reading of the composite whole, the vanishing point moves away infinitely, the One is dispersed in the multiple.

1 G. Paolini interviewed by B. Marcelis, in Domus 607 (Milan), June, 1980, p. 48.