Giulio Paolini

Seeking to investigate and deconstruct the intrinsic components of art, Giulio Paolini’s work entangles the viewer in the defining conditions of artistic germination. Addressing eminent visual issues so often taken for granted such as time, space, material and perspective, Geometria constitutes one of the artist’s most important and early investigations into the effects of proportion and the restrictions inherent to the rectangular image field. This is heightened by Paolini’s use of graph paper which “gives the image a visual plan; it produces a grid above and below these forms which relates to the page and therefore to the space on which I am working.” (Giulio Paolini interviewed by Mirella Bandini, Prospects no.1, March-April 1972)

In 1960 at the dawning of his career, Paolini had presented his iconic Disegno Geometrico, describing it as “the preparatory drawing of any drawing, that is, the geometric grid of the surface, which as such does not present itself as the subject of the support on which I drew it, but as a way of defining the support on which I acted, of characterizing it as an absolute and indeterminate presence not a conveyance of an eternal image.” (the artist quoted in Germano Celant, Giulio Paolini, New York 1972, p. 15) In other words the essence of the work was not meant as representational but rather a presentation of the unseen conditions that underlie and define even the most fundamental components of pictorial representation.

In Geometria Paolini develops upon the principles of this groundbreaking work. Not only does he impose a formal geometric grid upon the picture plane, breaking it down into a rigidly articulated surface of 48 individual squares, but he places different sized rectangles in each of the boxes, thereby encouraging us to consider the complex though seldom examined relationship between size and space. Whilst the effect is visually striking in its geometric clarity and simplicity, as the viewer strives to discern pattern or logic in their allocation and haphazard variety, we are unable to escape from the confines of the imposed grid and the shapes they contain. This in turn forces us to ponder the limits of representation, and more importantly, representational enslavement to the flat, geometric confines of the image field in Western art.