Doppia verità, 1995
GPO-0750
Double Truth
Plaster casts, plexiglas cases with reflecting side, white plinth
Two plexiglas cases 50 x 50 x 50 cm each, plinth 110 x 110 x 60 cm, overall dimensions 160 x 110 x 60 cm
Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, Chicago
The installation should be located close to a wall (with a small space in between it and the wall, hence, not in direct contact).
Two plexiglas cases placed together on a base – the sides that touch mirror each other – hold the two halves of a divided plaster cast of the head of the Athena Lemnia, placed on the bottom of the cases and turned the one towards the other, so that each one is looking at its own image, without seeing its complementary half beyond the mirror.
In the chimerical game of vis-à-vis, each correspondence, however realistic, is illusory, since the "truth" is doubled and divided, generating a deceitful game of gazes that suspends the vision of an integral unit.
The same theme was also developed in four other variants, made between 1995 and 1996, with the casts of other heads, arranged according to variable opposites (GPO-0748, GPO-0749, GPO-0751, GPO-0772).
Athena Lemnia, Roman copy of the 5th century BC bronze original by Phidias, marble, Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna.
| 2016-17 | New York, Center for Italian Modern Art, Giorgio de Chirico – Giulio Paolini / Giulio Paolini – Giorgio de Chirico, 14 October 2016 - 24 June 2017, col. repr. p. 33. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 750 p. 764, col. repr. |
