Jamais vu 2005

With a stacked formation of blank white canvases, Giulio Paolini’s Jamais vu brings the materials and supports of painting to the fore. Imagine what it would be like to make something like this... Paolini’s installation of canvases reminds me of the way that painters are in constant dialogue with one another, inspiring each other's creative processes. Here, Paolini composes something new using the very thing that artists use to create paintings, the most basic element of painting, the canvas. What I love about painting – and, of course, sculpture – is the way artists use raw materials to embody expression. There’s an ongoing process of building, destroying, and rebuilding. And I feel that playful experimentation with the canvas in this work. I can almost hear Paolini laughing when he came up with this sculpture. It seems he's having fun and asking us to think about painting in a new way.