Equivalenza

At the centre of the vast space of a white canvas, two perpendicular lines cross. Their meeting point, the exact focal point of the composition, is also the centre of two rectangles, they too drawn with perfect precision in thin black pencil line and occupying two growing portions of the space, re-echoing the dimensions of the canvas. Two lines, finally, run from the lower corners of the larger rectangle to the lower corners of the canvas itself: these are the composition’s only diagonal lines, and the space that they enclose, which therefore takes the form of a trapezoid, is the only element that suggests depth. Within this space, and only within its perimeter, there are arranged small photographic strips.
Here, a decade and a half on, Paolini is still engaged, in this work so representative of his lengthy artistic journey, with the poetics expressed by his Disegno geometrico, at the dawn of his career in 1960. Again he repeats that the only boundary to his art will be the indication of the possible space within which a potential additional creation can take form; again, he repeats that this boundary will be traced by resting his image on that simplest of all certainties, geometry. So what are the casual photographic strips doing, strewn about within this perfect space? Do they perhaps mark the entry of a trace of our own action into an organism claimed to be untouchable? As if they were tracks left on a white floor; unpredictable intrusions of life into the secluded sphere of thought.