Sho, 1963

The facsimile of a framed painting – a landscape by the nineteenth-century Italian painter Raffaello Sernesi chosen from the catalogue of framed works of the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato (Italian State Printing Department) – is mounted on a stretcher that is slightly larger so as to leave the edges of the support visible. The verso features the image of a group of people in the rain and the words on which the title of the work is based.
Sho is part of a group of works (from GPO-0028 to GPO-0049) whose common denominator is the presence of an intervention on both the recto and the verso of the painting. Surfaces of various types take turns appearing on the recto (painted paper, graph paper, photographic reproductions, shaped wooden panels), while on the verso (hidden from view) we find the details of images and printed words taken from magazines or from books. The title, when specified, refers to a textual element present on the verso. The artist explains that: “Just as on the surface various elements alternate among themselves, but always remain ‘blind’, in the sense that they tend not to supply an image, but are there for their own sake, occupying that given space, so the title itself is absolutely autonomous with respect to the surface [...], constituted by a fragment of words and, at times, images, following the signature and the date, on a white paper square on the back of the picture” (1972).1
Akin to two other works made during the same year involving the reproduction of another painting (GPO-0041, GPO-0042), the choice of subjects does not follow any logical criterion; the image is first of all involved as such: the "iconography is random, almost involuntary", says the artist; "the image is as though it were the image of the image, almost as if to justify the very existence of the painting”.2

1 G. Paolini in G. Celant, Giulio Paolini (New York: Sonnabend Press, 1972), p. 34 (revised translation, republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003), p. 122), reprint (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2019), p. 34. Cf. also the artist's remarks in C. Lonzi, Autoritratto (Bari: De Donato Editore, 1969), p. 367, reprint (Milan: Et al./Edizioni, 2010), p. 280, English edition (Brussels-London: Divided Publishing, 2021), p. 320.
2 G. Paolini in G. Celant, Giulio Paolini, op. cit. (New York: 1972), p. 33 (republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, op. cit. [Milan: 2003], p. 110, revised translation), reprint, op. cit. (Cinisello Balsamo: 2019), p. 33.