Mimesis

Artist Giulio Paolini has long been interested in vision as a way to know the world. Mimesi belongs to a series in which Paolini made plaster casts of iconic classical sculptures. In the series, the artist plays with classicism in an avant-garde way. Mimesi is composed of two plaster casts of the Greek messenger god Hermes from the classical marble sculpture, Hermes with the Infant Dionysus (350–330 BCE) by Praxiteles. Paolini’s sculptures don’t hide the fact that they are casts: the line of the mold is visible on the figures’ sides. Reproduced from the knee up, the figures are positioned to intercept one other’s gazes. The title of this work comes from the word “mimesis,” which means mimicry. In art and philosophy, mimesis also refers to representation as naturalistic reproduction—a convincing representation of a real thing in the world. By making two casts of the same sculpture, the artist sets up a dialogue between original and reproduction. As Paolini explained, “I want to be the observer who sees the distance that divides them and therefore captures all the possibilities of relationship, or absence of relationship, between the image and us.”