Giulio Paolini. 1960-1972. [English Ed.]

Curated by Germano Celant in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition comprises around fifty works executed between 1960 to 1972: coming from various public and private collections, these are displayed together for the first time.
The historical and theoretical basis of the exhibition may be found in a project for an installation entitled Ipotesi per una mostra (?Hypothesis for an Exhibition?) conceived by Paolini in 1963. This retrospective focuses on the artist?s output from his solo show in Rome in 1964 until the one in New York in 1973, when the first monograph providing an in-depth analysis of his work was published.
?It should be pointed out that the works in this exhibition date from the earliest period of my long career? ? Paolini has to say ? ?but this doesn?t mean that the installation simply reflects what has already been seen: some of the stylistic features underlying this show seem to be outside time (or out of place). In particular, while, on the one hand, these works seem to find their voice here, on the other they seem to arrange themselves around the silence and void of a central primary nucleus. The works on display really rotate round something that doesn?t exist or seems not to exist yet: I?m referring to the project for what was to have been my first solo show, Ipotesi per una mostra in 1963 (a project that at the time, for practical reasons, wasn?t realized and that has now been made visible here).? Ipotesi per una mostra is located in the centre of the exhibition space so as to become a continuous point of reference for visitors as they walk around it. Like a sort of kaleidoscope in which the images surrounding it are reflected, this work ? composed of four large transparent surfaces on which human figures dressed in black are reproduced with the silk-screen technique ? continuously, as if by magic, attracts the spectator?s attention. The surfaces surround an empty space, interposing themselves between the visitor and the ?central nucleus?, which is, in any case, inaccessible: ?The object is there, but it?s not visible, we?re not allowed to see it: certainly we can look at it, draw it, make our comments... but we?re guests, not judges of what we confine ourselves to observing [?]?