Image: Giulio Paolini: in due atti, 2026, view of Act I, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, near Turin, opens the second part of Giulio Paolini: in due atti (Giulio Paolini: In Two Acts) on 29 October 2026. The project, dedicated to the memory of the collector Gino Viliani, occupies Room 22 on the second floor of the castle and is curated by Marcella Beccaria and Andrea Viliani as part of the museum's new presentations of its collection.
The room has been conceived by the artist as a stage that changes over time. For the first act, on view since July 2026, Paolini selected two existing installations, Contemplator enim and In esilio, and turned them into environments that display other works of his. In the second act, these same structures will host a group of works that belonged to Gino Viliani, a dedicated collector of Paolini's art, and that have been promised as a gift to the museum.
According to the curators, Paolini turns the room into a device for staging and storytelling, bringing together on a single stage different places, people and roles: the artist's studio, a room in a home and a museum gallery, as well as the author, the collector, the curator and the public.
Born in Genoa in 1940 and based in Turin, Paolini has since the 1960s developed a body of work that examines the nature of the image, the act of looking and the role of the artist, often through reproductions, plaster casts, frames and the space of exhibition itself.
The second act opens on the same day as other new displays at Castello di Rivoli, including a room devoted to Carol Rama, also curated by Beccaria, and the exhibition Marisa Merz – La danza delle ore.
