The work Vis-à-vis (Amazon) (3) by Giulio Paolini officially becomes part of the permanent collection of the Regional Archaeological Museum “Pietro Griffo” in Agrigento. The project for the acquisition of the work, promoted by the Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, conceived and curated by Giusi Diana and Antonio Leone, was realized thanks to the support of PAC2024 - Plan for Contemporary Art, promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. Cost of the operation: 140,250 euros, according to a report a few days ago by the Agrigento Notizie newspaper.
Made in 2019, Paolini’s work consists of the two halves of the plaster cast of the head of a Roman copy of theWounded Amazon, attributed to the Greek sculptor Polyclitus (5th century B.C.) and now preserved in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The two parts, placed opposite each other, will find in Room XV of the Pietro Griffo Museum an unprecedented dialogue with a masterpiece of ancient art: the large Attic red-figure krater (460 B.C.) by the Painter of the Niobids from the necropolis of Gela. On the vase, the central band depicts theAmazonomachy, with the famous scene in which Achilles kills Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, falling in love with her at the very instant he stabs her to death.
In Paolini’s installation, the two halves of the Amazon’s face dialogue with a large suspended canvas, traversed by two diagonals traced in red pencil: a recurring sign, almost a signature of the artist, that conceptually defines the space of representation. This element, present since his first work Geometric Drawing in 1960, constitutes a perspective artifice and at the same time a statement of poetics that has constantly accompanied his artistic research.
The interplay of gazes between the two portions of the Amazon’s face thus becomes, in the author’s intentions, a reflection on the very meaning of the work of art: its existence, its becoming and its fulfillment through the gaze of the viewer. “When I place two identical specimens of the same ancient sculpture in front of each other, I do not want to be the creator or rediscoverer of those sculptures, but the observer who grasps the distance that divides them, thus all the possibilities of relationship or absence of relationship that are determined between them, and between that image and us,” the artist explained.
“Few times in my long career have I been so happily surprised to learn that a work of mine would find a home in a place so perfectly consonant with its very nature,” he added. “I could not have imagined a more kindred context, and for this I wish to thank those who strongly desired and wanted to make this particular acquisition a reality.”
“The recent opening of the Griffo Museum to the dialogue between collections of ancient and contemporary art, thanks to the acquisition of a series of photographs by Claudio Gobbi, a project carried out by ruber.contemporanea and curated by Giusi Diana with the support of ”Photography Strategy 2023,“ also promoted by the Ministry of Culture’s General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity, has initiated a small but refined museum section, to be enriched with works by recognized Italian and international artists who have in their poetics a continuous relationship with classical antiquity. It is fitting to start with Giulio Paolini, one of the most internationally recognized Italian artists who, since the 1970s, has cultivated in his works a precise reference to classical antiquity, particularly through the presence of casts of ancient statues,” said Roberto Sciarratta, Director of the Archaeological Park.
“The two seemingly distant works: a masterpiece of Attic ceramics and the enigmatic work of one of the greatest exponents of international conceptual art; through iconographic assonances, they light up to our gaze with unprecedented suggestions, which go in the direction of the perception of that common ”inactuality“ that for Giulio Paolini is the ”general constant disposition of Art," say curators Giusi Diana and Antonio Leone.
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| Giulio Paolini's Vis-à-vis (Amazon) enters the permanent collection of the Pietro Griffo Museum of Agrigento |
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