work
The shape of absence
| category | Painting |
| subject | Architecture, Abstract, Human figure |
| tags | architettura, interiorità, gabbia, gabbie, via di fuga, mente umana, rosso, metallo, acciaio, olio, acrilico, inside us, interiority, cage, humans, human mind, architecture |
| base | 80 cm |
| height | 100 cm |
| depth | 2 cm |
| year | 2025 |
mixed media – oil, tempera, steel on canvas
This work was born as a silent yet powerful cry, a visual declaration on the state of contemporary existence. The red background—dense, tactile, layered—is not merely a color: it is flesh, urgency, tension. It is the symbolic place where the conflict between the individual and the invisible constraints of society takes form. A red that can be blood, passion, anger, but also a desire for life and transformation.
At the center of the composition, three horizontally placed metal bars construct a sort of cage or visual barrier. They are cold, rational, almost industrial segments, brutally grafted into the pictorial body of the work. There is no attempt to hide the implicit violence of this presence. On the contrary, the metal wounds the surface, interrupts it, constrains it. It is the emblem of internalized social pressure: rules, expectations, roles, behavioral codes that organize and paralyze at the same time.
But on closer inspection, something doesn’t hold. The welds are imperfect, some connections appear weak, fragmented, non-definitive. The structure may seem rigid, yet it is already crossed by cracks, by an initial principle of disintegration. This is not a closed, inviolable system: it is a cage that can be dismantled. The work invites us to grasp precisely this ambiguity: what appears unchangeable is, in reality, transient. The possibility of liberation exists, but it requires a clear gaze and an intentional act.
In this sense, the canvas is not only a denunciation but a threshold. It speaks of alienation, yes, but also of the attempt to awaken, of the need to break internalized patterns in order to rediscover an authentic relationship with oneself and with the world. It is a work that lives in tension: between oppression and desire, between structure and disintegration, between silence and scream.
The very material of the painting—dense, vivid, abrasive—reinforces this duality. Every layer, every shade of red, every incision suggests a compressed energy struggling to emerge. There is no decoration, no harmony: rather, there is the rawness of an existence confronting its own limitations and trying, with strength and effort, to move beyond them.
Thus, this work stands as an existential metaphor, an emotional device capable of questioning the viewer, challenging them, placing them before their own personal cage. And it does so without offering answers, but with the honesty of someone who has already begun to break the metal.
This work was born as a silent yet powerful cry, a visual declaration on the state of contemporary existence. The red background—dense, tactile, layered—is not merely a color: it is flesh, urgency, tension. It is the symbolic place where the conflict between the individual and the invisible constraints of society takes form. A red that can be blood, passion, anger, but also a desire for life and transformation.
At the center of the composition, three horizontally placed metal bars construct a sort of cage or visual barrier. They are cold, rational, almost industrial segments, brutally grafted into the pictorial body of the work. There is no attempt to hide the implicit violence of this presence. On the contrary, the metal wounds the surface, interrupts it, constrains it. It is the emblem of internalized social pressure: rules, expectations, roles, behavioral codes that organize and paralyze at the same time.
But on closer inspection, something doesn’t hold. The welds are imperfect, some connections appear weak, fragmented, non-definitive. The structure may seem rigid, yet it is already crossed by cracks, by an initial principle of disintegration. This is not a closed, inviolable system: it is a cage that can be dismantled. The work invites us to grasp precisely this ambiguity: what appears unchangeable is, in reality, transient. The possibility of liberation exists, but it requires a clear gaze and an intentional act.
In this sense, the canvas is not only a denunciation but a threshold. It speaks of alienation, yes, but also of the attempt to awaken, of the need to break internalized patterns in order to rediscover an authentic relationship with oneself and with the world. It is a work that lives in tension: between oppression and desire, between structure and disintegration, between silence and scream.
The very material of the painting—dense, vivid, abrasive—reinforces this duality. Every layer, every shade of red, every incision suggests a compressed energy struggling to emerge. There is no decoration, no harmony: rather, there is the rawness of an existence confronting its own limitations and trying, with strength and effort, to move beyond them.
Thus, this work stands as an existential metaphor, an emotional device capable of questioning the viewer, challenging them, placing them before their own personal cage. And it does so without offering answers, but with the honesty of someone who has already begun to break the metal.
