Doppia verità, 1995
GPO-0751
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
Private collection, Milan
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 plinth – the backs of each of the cases are reflective – hold the two halves of a divided plaster cast of the head of the Athena Lemnia, placed up against the mirror. The two casts thus gaze at each other twice: once "in reality", by way of the transparent sides of the two cases that touch, and once in the mirror, by way of their respective doubles.
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-0750, GPO-0772).
Athena Lemnia, Roman copy of the 5th century BC bronze original by Phidias, marble, Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna.
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 751 p. 764, not repr. |
