A prima vista (At First Sight), 2022/2024

Giulio Paolini’s edition A prima vista (At First Sight) captures a moment of timeless enchantment. At the center, two classical figures – Bacchus and Ariadne, whose "love at first sight" was captured in 16^th-century sculpture and later in the famous oil painting by Titian – are shown in an embrace of marble stillness, their gazes frozen in an eternal first encounter. Above them, a photographic fragment of a clear blue sky introduces a burst of light and openness, contrasting with the solidity of the stone and suggesting a metaphysical space of longing or transcendence. True to Paolini’s conceptual practice, the work is less a narrative than a meditation on perception and presence. The title evokes not only romantic immediacy but also the act of seeing itself – of the viewer encountering the artwork and the figures encountering each other.