Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1967

The oval-shaped photographic canvas bears a portrait of Alain Robbe-Grillet holding a magnifying lens featuring the very same portrait.
The doubling of the image underlies a paradox played out with the complicity of the lens: rather than increasing its visibility, according to the natural function of the optical instrument, the repetition in a smaller format diminishes the image's legibility. In this sense, the work pays tribute to Robbe-Grillet and the Ecole du regard. The latter was founded on the meticulous description, often associated with the process of the mise-en-abîme, which instead of being functional to the narrative ends up turning in upon itself. Similarly, in Paolini's work the mise-en-abîme deviates attention from the subject of the image and instead shifts it to the visual act as such and to the nature of the image itself.
Since he first used it in 1965, Paolini sees photography, indeed, as the "’advent’ (and consequent illusion) that decrees the end or the goal of the image and the origin of the image of the image. […] [The photograph has] a critical function, which allows us to talk about the image”.1

1 G. Paolini, Fine e origine dell’immagine: l’illusione fotografica, talk delivered in Bari on 26 May 1983, first published in G. Paolini, Ancora un libro. I libri di A.E.I.U.O. (Rome: Editrice Inonia, 1987), p. 60; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 34.