Les fausses confidences

The twelve lithographs feature the protagonist of the painting L’Indifférent (1717) by Jean-Antoine Watteau, a sort of juggler intent on juggling twelve blank sheets, corresponding to the number of lithographs contained by the portfolio. Every image bears the title of a previous work by Paolini. The title of the portfolio recalls the eponymous eighteenth-century play by the French playwright Pierre de Marivaux, in which fake confidences are actually the revelations of false secrets, and where the power of the language influences the being and the appearance of a basic ambiguity. The twelve parts, to be arranged in three rows of four elements each, form a scene pervaded by a sense of precariousness and fragility: the actor is a stand-in for the artist, always seeking that moment of balance that precedes the coming into being of a work.