Things are not as they appear

2015–2023

A stone relief of three nude figures seen from behind, arms across each other's shoulders, mounted on a whitewashed brick wall with shrub branches reaching in from both sides.

Installation view: the print is a small image set high in a wide white mount, in a pale wood frame on a white wall, seen at an angle.

The work as a book: an open volume with a sand-coloured cover on a grey-blue surface, the left page blank and the right carrying the photograph of the relief.

Things are not as they appear is an open project, made of images taken from 2015 to the present. The work comes out of the need to bring light to the relation between the visible and the invisible. Every element of reality, natural or artificial, is composed of other elements and is subject to a continuous transformation, which leads us into the several dimensions inherent in the reality around us. Impermanence shows us the layering and the complexity of what we are and of what is around us. It is an invitation to imagine, to go beyond what is visible, leaving room for doubt and for the question. Each image lives on its own and is at the same time in relation with the others, within a systemic dimension. Everything is connected, and each image discloses a dimension of its own towards a deeper reading of a reality that is not as it appears. The project first took shape as an artist’s book and then grew into a solo exhibition — curated by Luca Panaro — held after it won the Premio Speciale SAC Spazio Arte Contemporanea. Although it belongs to Things are not as they appear, this work has, as Luca Panaro’s critical text points out, a nature distinct from the others: “There is only one image that departs from the rest; in the book it is hidden, and shows itself only when the dust jacket is opened. In the exhibition it stands apart as the only framed one. Its particularity lies in its being made by superimposing two photographs, and so far from reality — perhaps the beginning of a new line of research, where the natural and the artificial can live together.”