Lucrezio's Dwell

The artist ’s tendency toward absolute identification with a classical model is apparent in Casa di Lucrezio (House of Lucretius),1981,a work created in seven versions. In the example in the Castello ’s collection,four fragments of a plaster slab featuring a carved drawing of a labyrinth, which were discovered in the house of Lucretius in Pompeii, are joined with four casts, two intact and two shattered —possible likenesses of the ancient poet —positioned on four bases. According to Paolini ’s ideas, it is in the fragments, traces of possible forms of elusive bodies, that we can glimpse the fullness of classical beauty and its formal and
intellectual perfection. The artist compares himself to the poet, in a self-reflective dialectic characterized by
fragmentation, the double, and mirror images as stylistic elements in the ideation of a stage-set architecture. Behind a geometrically ordered facade and beyond the rational clarity of the contents, his works reveal an intrinsic labyrinthine spirit, an empty space that goes beyond the physical limitations of the painting and disturbs the enigmatic quiet of his compositions.