Novero, 1999
GPO-0834
Group
Gilt frames, pencil on wall
Variable number of frames 40 x 60 cm each, overall dimensions site-specific
Dismantled work
• 1999, Geneva, Mamco: the work was installed in two adjacent rooms; the number of frames corresponded to that of the crumpled up elements in another work on display, Big Bang (1997-98, GPO-0823). Scattered around the room they alluded to the “missing” works, abandoned in favour of other, different projects.
Seventy-nine gilded frames the same size as the artist’s first painting Disegno geometrico (1960, GPO-0001) – a simulacrum of the ideal painting that alludes to all images, past, present, and future – are lined up in three parallel rows at regular intervals on the walls of several adjacent rooms, thereby creating a regular pattern. Outlined in pencil on the walls, in random order, are rectangles in different formats, which in their missing relationship with respect to the register of the frames represent failed attempts to offer completeness to that ideal dimension.
The same iconography was used in 1998: the gallery of gilded frames against the background of a drawing of staggered squares and rectangles appeared for the first time in Collezione privata, (GPO-0804) and in Novero (GPO-0825), while the title was conceived in 1977 (cf. GPO-0352).
| 1999 | Geneva, MAMCO Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Giulio Paolini. Salles d’attente, 22 June - 23 December, no catalogue. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 834 p. 859, col. repr. |
| • | Brera in contemporaneo. Fabro, Garutti, Kounellis, Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan: Johan & Levi editore, 2015), col. repr. p. 233. |
