artist in officina
Artist Residency
Emanuele Fasciani
Art, Territory and Experimentation
July 2025
For Jung, alchemy is a psychology projected into the language of material symbols. Alchemical processes represent the soul's journey towards integration and completeness. The language of the alchemists thus becomes a symbolic map of inner transformation, and the laboratory is the mirror of the soul.
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An initial journey into space:
By placing these installations within the village of Montefollonico, Fasciani transforms the landscape into a psychic itinerary. Walking between black (Nigredo), white (Albedo) and gold (Rubedo) is not just an aesthetic experience, but a truly symbolic journey, which involves body, soul and the subconscious. The visitor is invited to reflect on where they are in their own personal transformation process. In full Jungian spirit, Fasciani's art becomes alchemy: the colours are not decorative but archetypal, the installations are not mere objects but visual rites of passage. Just like for the alchemists, it is not a question of materials, but the process of transformation itself.
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THE FERTILE DARK Tondo Park
In this circular space, enclosed by poplars and cypresses, the first phase is revealed: dissolution.
Five black sculptures emerge from the earth like ancient presences. Made of bitumen and wood recovered from historic beams in the village, they evoke matter in transformation, time that collapses, identity that disintegrates. It is here, slightly outside the village centre, that the journey begins: in the silence of the forest, in the shadow of the unconscious.
Nigredo is the night of the soul. The moment when everything you used to be falls apart. Black is loss, but also womb. This is the beginning of rebirth.
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THE INTERNAL LIGHT Piazza Dionisia Cinughi
In the heart of the village, between the stones and the open light of the square, is Albedo: purification.
A cracked white sphere, resting on a nest of branches blackened by bitumen, reveals a gilded interior. The base - a slice of Roman pine - comes from the artist's grandmother's house, the place of his childhood. A work suspended between fragility and revelation, between surface and depth. Albedo is clarity after chaos. An open wound that lets the light shine through. It is the truth that becomes clear only if you have the courage to look inside.
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THE GOLD DISCOVERED Church of Triano
In the dim light of the Church of Triano, Rubedo takes shape. Two large gilded encaustic canvases (308 × 208 cm), placed in the niches of the transept, reflect a majestic light. At the base, a trace of black: the memory of the darkness from which gold was born. Rubedo is not the triumph, but the union of opposites: light and shadow, beginning and end, Ego and Self. Rubedo is the fulfillment. Gold is not the goal, but the state in which everything finds its place. And you, finally, recognize yourself.
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Notes for the visitor:
These works live where they are placed. Walk among them without following an order. Each stage can be the beginning. Each step is part of your own journey.
Agata Stępień
Memoria Absentia, August 2024
The exhibition is the culmination of the creative process of "Memoria Absentia" and its accompanying happening. By experimenting with modern conservation solvents, Agata Stepien shows that the creative process can exist through subtraction, not just addition and accumulation. The initial image is X-rayed by a conservation technician, and becomes a sketch for subsequent works. This is an archaeological exploration through abrasion, scraping, and burning with chemicals.
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These are not simply completed paintings, but evolving works with coexisting, generative, and constructive elements. The idea for this project was born a few months ago when the artist's friend, a conservator at Auschwitz, talked about the renovation of a chapel. During several months of floor exploration, she made surprising discoveries. Her words evoked in the artist's imagination images of tunnels, corridors, and the tension associated with a possible discovery. As a child, Agata dreamed of becoming an archaeologist.
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The paintings are shots from the subconscious, an approach to beauty, tragedy, or brilliance. A finished and completed work of art is more than just the sum of its parts. It is also a visual force that unleashes destruction, exaggeration, and love for the extreme. As human beings, we are dominated by passions, just as we were five or three thousand years ago. Therefore, art must necessarily confront humanity. This simple truth implies that art, besides existing, can and should engage in dialogue with the viewer.
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The process of contemporary art is based on impulses from reality, which concern the human condition, and constitutes a mixture of intuition and instinct. Contemporary art allows us to reach deep problems and tensions, as long as we are prepared to face them. Feelings, even if sometimes uncomfortable, stimulate.
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Agata’s aim is to reveal everything that is uncertain, hidden, doubtful, and marginal regarding the inspiration of the creative process. Demonstrating that no one is exempt from imperfection and insecurity. Through art she expresses her feelings and defines the creative process as an act of assimilating emotions and engaging the viewer personally. Art liberates both the visual sphere and the concepts of art, beauty, and aesthetics.
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Creating a painting can require several sessions, repeated every few months, for up to two years. Repainted over and over again, scraped, soaked in resin, painted with the earth extracted from under ancestral houses, these works become the silent companions of the artist…. They tell the story of women, and every feminine narrative, once told, becomes a success in its own right.
Sponsored by
Margareth Dorigatti
Epistolarium - Attesa , June 2024
ARTISTINOFFICINA is pleased to present the project “Epistolarium - Attesa” by the artist Margareth Dorigatti. This is the “opening” to a series of initiatives, linked to the work of other artists invited to develop their own research projects while based temporarily at the Atelier-Officina. It is intended that this initial event will lead the way for them too to exhibit their work in Montefollonico at the end of their residence in the Atelier-Officina.
In a time in which the rule of "everything now" applies and patience has no place in the daily frenzy of contemporary society, Margareth Dorigatti invites us to reflect on waiting and the many facets of the human soul that it affects. Handwritten correspondence, the leitmotif of the works on display, began to spread in the first half of the thirteenth century, coinciding with the spread of vernacular language and the start of the production of paper in Italy, a material which was far cheaper than parchment. The advent of the digital age has swept away age-old habits in just a quarter of a century.
Not only is the artist therefore focusing our attention on a tradition which has virtually disappeared, but she makes it an autobiographical, intimate and personal story. Mystery and curiosity find space in her canvases. The content of the letters, sometimes partially revealed, other times only put in context by the time and place in which they existed, creates an invisible bond with the observer. The involvement then becomes emotional, resurrecting feelings from a time now lost, but alive in the emotional memories that influence the present of each of us.
“(…) You’re an acute, insightful and occasionally unsparing analyst of your - and our - feelings, dear Margareth. And this way of delving deep into expression and existence is what makes your “Epistolarium” so fascinating: the chromatic grafts, mixed techniques, double surfaces and your astounding technical armoury all become part of the picture with the spontaneous emotional strength of a caress, intimating harmony among apparent dissonance. Far from any form of intellectual dalliance, these works speak for the magnetic virtue of achieving poetry in pictorial form. (…)”
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Duccio Trombadori (poet, journalist, art critic and teacher of Aesthetics at the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza) from the catalogue for the exhibition held at the Galleria MAJA Arte Contemporanea in Rome.
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con il patrocinio di
Comune
Torrita Di Siena
