Teatro dell’opera, 1992-93

At the intersection point of the two steel cables stretched along the diagonals of the room, a black pencil pierces two torn fragments of the drawing of a hand using a pencil to indicate the centre of the watch on a second hand’s wrist; the drawing is squared in red pencil in the diagonals. About twenty directors chairs are arranged in different directions and in random order, starting from a concentration in the middle of the room. Lying atop them in the middle is a plexiglas sheet. On the sheet, close to the fragments pierced by the pencil, is another chair. Scattered about on some of the chairs, as well as on the one atop the plexiglas sheet, are some torn fragments from the drawing of the two hands. Four spotlights, located in the corners of the room where the cables come to an end, and a lamp connected to an electronic flash illuminate the central portion of the installation.
Attention directed towards a presumed apparition, one that is unknown and authorless, and the tension of the public as it awaits an event, are the two complementary moments of Paolini’s “theatre of the opus”, which he constantly calls into play in his works. Since the late 1980s, the artist’s deliberately theatrical installations make this theatre of the opus coincide with the display scene itself and with the exhibition act as such (cf. by way of example, Signore e Signori…, 1988, GPO-0618, Künstler-Theater, 1989, GP0-0648, and Esposizione universale, 1992, GPO-0750). The pencil, which in the beams of light and right in the middle crosses the drawings, alludes to the works coming into being,1 while the disorderly assembly of chairs points to our bewilderment before the eventuality of an unpredictable and absolute accomplishment, which despite the attempt to decipher it – as suggested by the chair placed close to the drawing – transcends any hope of our understanding.