ROME.- Artist Danilo Sciorilli is transforming a domestic space in Rome's Quadraro district into a captivating realm of symbols and introspection with his solo exhibition, "A Masked Blessing." Opening on January 25, 2025, at Casa Vuota (via Maia 12, int. 4A), the exhibition, curated by Francesco Paolo Del Re and Sabino de Nichilo, invites viewers to contemplate the complexities of human existence through a unique blend of paintings, installations, video animation, and drawings.

Sciorilli's artistic language is built upon a foundation of seemingly disparate elements: spheres and children's games, witches and magical rituals, flocks of crows and processions of beetles. These images, rendered primarily in graphite, form a dreamlike and coded visual vocabulary that resonates with a primordial sensibility.

The exhibition's title, "A Masked Blessing," itself hints at the central theme: the inherent contradictions of life. As curators Del Re and de Nichilo explain, the exhibition "draws strength from opposites and their repelling attraction to accompany visitors on a journey marked by visions and evocations of an ancestral call that is renewed in the dense stratification of disparate cultural, literary and visual references, uniting autobiography and curiosity."

Sciorilli's work is deeply intertwined with the specific space of Casa Vuota. The emptiness and silence of the house, the signs of its past life, have inspired the artist to create a kind of distorted self-portrait—an imagined alter ego who might have inhabited the space in a distant past or future. This figure, both similar and dissimilar to Sciorilli himself, serves as a lens through which to explore the human condition.

"I have wondered why we perceive our life as a straight line, with the idea of going towards something; a line stretched in the direction of a goal to be reached," says Sciorilli. "'A Masked Blessing' curves the line of life and makes it a circle: made of anxieties and hopes, of dances and games, of dark rituals and 'aenima' (an extreme purification rite), of body and spirit, of when we rejoice for being in the world and every time it seems like a torment."

This cyclical view of life is reflected in the recurring motifs of the sphere and the circular dance. The sphere, constantly shifting in meaning, represents both nothingness and everything, a black hole and the moon, a burning star and a simple stone. Figures dance in circles, engaging in rituals that express both hope and a connection to something beyond.

The installations within Casa Vuota maintain a sense of the space's original purpose as a home. A table, a mattress, a picture on the wall—these simple elements evoke a domestic setting, which then becomes the stage for a "murmured or shouted mystery," a play of light and shadow, of opposing forces that define human experience.

The curators further describe Sciorilli's approach: "Sciorilli needs to argue an order to unleash chaos. It is an embrace, his, that surrounds his audience as the coils of a mythological serpent do. It wraps itself with the circular rhythm of a children's game drawn on the canvas starting from a vintage photograph and is repeated in the form of a sabbath, of a chase of beetles carrying light and birds in shackles that cannot take flight and crowd together like nightmares in a room, surrounding the visitor." This circular movement evokes the rotation of film reels in old cinemas, connecting the exhibition to the artist’s fascination with film and the cyclical nature of stories and myths.

Born in Atessa in 1992 and now based in Turin, Sciorilli’s work consistently explores the concept of endings and the attempt to transcend them. He sees art and science as complementary tools for understanding the world and envisioning possible futures. His work, often infused with irony, explores themes of origin, evolution, and finality.

"A Masked Blessing" will be open to the public until March 23, 2025.