Dal “Trionfo della rappresentazione” (cerimoniale: l’artista è assente), 1985

Three fixed slide projections respectively present two, three, and four valets, included in the perspective defined by the straight lines that from one image to another, starting from the two red diagonals, trace the squaring of Disegno geometrico (GPO-0001). Each valet is holding a plexiglas cubes containing fragments of images, which refer to an unlimited number of hypotheses: in the first image, the cubes are filled with torn fragments in colours ranging from white to black; in the second image, one cube contains a crumpled up blank sheet and another cube a crumpled up black sheet; in the third and last one the cubes feature some white rectangles, while several sheets of blank paper are scattered all around in random order. Standing out in all three of the scenes, at the centre, is the image of a slide projector on a base, which is perfectly symmetrical to the real one projecting the slides on the wall. With respect to previous examples in which there are valets, in this case the lack of torn fragments applied on the wall (details of other works or from monographic publications), that is, of a direct trace of the artist himself, is meant to validate the author's absence with regard to the work, emphasized in the title.
The valet de chambre, taken from French eighteenth-century theatre iconography, introduced in 1983-84 in the form of silhouettes and used for the first time in a photographic version in this work, introduces a particularly significant character in Paolini's poetics. The gesture of offering or handing something that defines the valet – analogous with that of presenting and observing, which distinguishes other figures in costume appearing in previous works – symbolically corresponds for Paolini to the act of representation itself, understood to be a device that guides the gaze towards the construction of an image (for instance, through the artifices of perspective). Anonymous and detached valets also refer to the role that Paolini attributes to the author: rather than inventing or demonstrating something, he limits himself to elevating the gesture of the offer to the very topic of the work. By way of the stand-in of the valet, the author exits the scene to take his seat in the audience and assume the role of the spectator, who before the work waits or listens, awaiting the offer that it announces to his gaze and that the gesture of the valet makes evident. Renouncing his role as a creator, the author who becomes spectator of the "theatre" of the work of art as such finds a way to emphasize and therefore offer to our gaze the "miracles" of the representation itself, that is, to celebrate its "triumph".
The work is part of a themed group of works which began in 1983-84 with Trionfo della rappresentazione (GPO-0507) and was developed in various formulation until 1987 (cf. GPO-539, GPO-0562, GPO-0605, GPO-0607).