TIME by Gianluca Pacchioni

18/04/2023 - 23/04/2023

In the magnificent Richini courtyard of Palazzo Litta, artfully illuminated by Viabizzuno, the public is welcomed by the monumental site-specific work TIME, created by the Milanese master of stone and metal art Gianluca Pacchioni, who has collaborated with the Veronese artisan company Girasole Pietre Naturali, which specializes in the research and working of stone, gathering the precious heritage of the local territorial tradition. The artisan artist, a true demiurge heir to the Renaissance tradition, was able here to express, with the plastic power that connotes his works, the strength and intensity of the creative action, which springs from the encounter between art and inspiration, talent and originality, in the sign of great artistic and technical know-how. In the service of a dense reflection on the fascinating theme of Time. Everything started from the search for the special stone: an amazing block of green, pink and bluette onyx, evocatively christened "Odyssey," weighing no less than 5 tons, which arrived in Milan from the Middle East after a long and intense journey. Federica Sala, curator and passionate connoisseur of Pacchioni's work, says, "In those nearly five tons of Middle Eastern onyx there are not only the seven thousand kilometers the block traveled to arrive in the courtyard of Palazzo Litta, but there are millions of years of crystallization of salts and silicon from times unknown to us.... But if it were only matter we would be looking at the work of a geologist instead of that of an artist. So here the artist intervenes in the midst of this submerged terrestrial mirror of the emerged vault of heaven. With a hole. A vortex. A door to the elsewhere. An invitation to throw oneself into infinity or, to put it better, to traverse its limits allowed by today's knowledge. A hole that is a time funnel, in which there is a way in but also a way out. And in between is the mystery, on whose subtle horizon the artist tiptoes."