Milano: Fondazione Carriero - Giulio Paolini - Del bello Ideale

“The work exists even before the intervention of the artist, who is the first to contemplate it.”

Giulio Paolini

Fondazione Carriero 

Giulio Paolini - del Bello Ideale 

The exhibition del Bello Ideale, until February 10, at the Fondazione Carriero,  investigates and explores Conceptual Art by analyzing the work of Giulio Paolini, an unchallenged pioneer in Italy, through an impressive selection of works, chosen and installed with the Turin-based artist which covers his entire fifty-seven year career by displaying masterpieces, some of his famous self-portraits, as well as, three new site-specific works. The exhibition is curated by Francesco Stocchi,  with interventions by the stage designer Margherita Palli. There are three theme groups that have been singled-out in the itinerary, they are presented individually, one for each level of the Fondazione, while maintaining a mutual and constant dialogue with each other. 

Giulio Paolini - Cariatide - 1984

President of the scientific committee of Fondazione Carriero, Ennio and Giorgio Brion

https://fondazionecarriero.org/en/  

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait  

Giorgio De Chirico - Se Ipsum - 1948

Scenography - Margherita Palli

The setting evokes Paolini's studio observed through holes present along a wooden wall that surround the space, typical of Renaissance studioli, which inspired this scenery.  Amidst shelves with books and rolled up drawings, on an easel the work Se Ipsum, Giorgio De Chirico's self-portrait. For Paolini, this artist was the first to take a lateral and critical approach to artist creation.

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait - The Author is Absent

In Cielo - 2018
Controfigura - critica del punto di vista - 1981

On the ground floor the installation revolves around the theme of the Portrait and Self-portrait, a veritable topos of Western Art history and focuses on the practice of Paolini, who since the 1960s was intimately engaged in analyzing this topic, refining it to the point of withdrawing his presence from his own works. 

 Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Giulio Paolini - Autoritratto - 1970

 copyright Giulio Paolini - photo by Adam Reich - courtesy Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini - Torino

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Giulio Paolini - Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est ? - 1969-70

Ground Floor - Portrait and Self-portrait 
Ritratto dell'artista come modello - 1980

Deposizione - 2018

curator Francesco Stocchi and stage designer Margherita Palli
Monogramma - 1965

 photo by Agostino Osio - installation view at Fondazione Carriero - Milan -  courtesy Fondazione Carriero 

First Floor - On the Surface - Line, Perspective, Horizon, Tautology ...

Scenography  - Margherita Palli

The installation evocatively recreates an image taken from The Book of Perspective (1604-1605) by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-1607), a Flemish architect and painter known for his studies on perspectives and numerous architecture engravings.  The treatise on perspective is a key reference text in Giulio Paolini's work.

First Floor - On the Surface
Senza Titolo - 1964

Necessaire - 1968

The section on the first floor is titled On the Surface and develops Paolini’s relationship with the theme of perspective in all its forms, from an exploration of lines to the symbology of horizons up to the use of mirroring, tautology, and repetition as tools for analyzing space and time.

  

First Floor - On the Surface
Senza titolo - 1963

 Photo Matteo Piazza - courtesy Fondazione Carriero -  Lara Facco PandC

Giulio Paolini - 1995

First Floor - On the Surface
Finis Terrae - 2018

 

First Floor - On the Surface

Indice delle opere inscritto in un motivo decorativo - 1972

Idem IV (regesto delle opere come motivo a figure geometriche sparse) - 1974

 photo by Agostino Osio - installation view at Fondazione Carriero - Milan -  courtesy Fondazione Carriero

Second floor - One of Two - Mythical and Classical

Finally, the Rococo hall on the second floor hosts One of Two, which presents a selection of works that explore the relationship between Myth and Classicism in Paolini’s artistic universe: emblems of an ideal beauty that, in polarizing gazes with its harmony, creates a seemingly unbridgeable distance between the work of art and the viewer.

 Second floor - One of Two
Mimesi - 1975

Second floor - One of Two
Saffo - 1968