Anatomy of Fear - Catalog of competing works
Competition — Lojelo Art Gallery
CATALOGUE OF COMPETITION WORKS IN RANDOM ORDER:
1. ALBERTO MARCONCINI
«Chimera automata»
Technique: Drawing/pencil – AI processing, printing – paper aging – patina/wax antiquing
Measurements: Work: 55 × 38 cm | Frame: 73 × 53 cm
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
CODEX OCCULTUS LEONARDI
My genius will demonstrate what the human eye has not yet perceived, and for this I already lament in my heart. This self-propelled Chimera, if ever brought to a perfect end, will know neither mercy nor master, and will turn its ferocious bites to the ruin of the human race. Therefore I conceal its secret, for it would be less harmful to have conceived it than to have given birth to it. For he who inspires motion in the machine, inspires life to its very fear.
The artist's research has always been linked to Leonardo da Vinci, his fellow citizen. In this work, he imagined a secret manuscript by the Master: a study of a Chimera Automata, a creature born of human ingenuity and never brought to completion for fear of the consequences.
Just as Leonardo studied anatomy to understand life and its mechanisms, so the artist here represents the anatomy of a fear generated by man himself: that of a creation that could one day escape his control.
The chimera thus becomes a bridge between Leonardo's constraining thought and our present, in which artificial intelligence emerges as a new form of creation. Fear comes to life the very moment that what humans create begins to slip from their grasp.
2. ALESSANDRO VILLANUCCI
«The border»
Technique: Photographic paper
Measurements: 24 x 32 cm plus mat and frame (40 x 48 cm external dimensions)
Price: €80
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
On a summer night, the dim light of a streetlamp, an arch, and a stone wall mark a threshold: reality or dream, fear of the unknown or the desire to go beyond? In the darkness, the certainties that shelter us from our deepest fears fade. It is there, in the shadow beyond the light, that our ghosts take shape. How many ways can we dissect and bring to life the very substance of our fear?
3. ALESSIA SOLA
«Anxiety»
Technique: Acrylic on sheet
Dimensions: 44 × 32 cm
Price: €200
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The figure expresses a deep, inner fear: the face is partially covered by the hand, symbolizing the internal fear that is taking over.
The colors green and purple, associated with comic book villains, represent the dark and disturbing side of fear, while the yellow background creates a strong contrast of light that lays bare everything we try to hide.
The work does not depict an external threat, but an intimate fear capable of transforming a person and pushing them to hide their identity.
4. ANDREA MATTIELLO
«I am also made of fear»
Technique: Acrylic, enamel, collage and thread on canvas
Dimensions: 70 × 80 cm
Price: €900
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The composition of the work is dominated by a dense, oppressive darkness, in which both subject and background become the embodiment of the human mind when overwhelmed by anguish and fear: a dark place where every point of reference fades and one loses one's bearings. At the center of the work emerges a stylized human figure, entirely white. This blinding whiteness clearly isolates her from the rest of the context, transforming her into the emotional fulcrum of the work. Her posture expresses a profound sense of impotence and paralysis; she is a fragile purity, defenseless in the face of the surrounding chaos, still incapable or unaware of managing certain emotions, so much so that hiding her vision behind her arms becomes her defense.
Around it looms a gigantic anthropomorphic silhouette, a gigantic and disproportionate presence reminiscent of a painful mask or a shadow monster held together by disturbing stitching, a titanic threat that looms and squeezes the lower part of the white figure's body in a suffocating grip.
Other elements on the canvas, such as a scratched and wounded heart, a scar, flames and paint drips, several applied wedges, and a series of judgmental, acid-green eyes staring loomingly, emphasize the human being's perpetual struggle with his own inner demons. In this context, the message of the work "I Am Also Made of Fear" is not intended to be one of surrender or defeat, but rather a manifesto of acceptance of one's own fragility, a growing awareness and consciousness.
Fear and anguish do not deny the existence of the individual, but rather declare, on the contrary, the complex, profound and painful humanity continually balanced between rationality and emotion.
5. ANNA RAFASCHIERI
«Place hit»
Technique: Mixed media
Dimensions: 80 × 60 cm
Price: €800
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The concept stems from the title "place struck," a raised heart with its own wounds and marks, its own pain. The female figure is cut in half as if interrupted, broken, and it is precisely from there that all the suffering emanates and radiates, transforming into light.
The work represents the exact moment when light strikes and reveals a pain, a profound suffering. The figure, painted in an almost transparent blue, is suspended in silence. It has no defined face because it is not a portrait; it is a state of mind, while the body becomes a sacred place.
At the center, the red heart. Alive, material, pulsating. It is the only completely solid element in the painting. The red is an inner red, the core that cannot be hidden. From the heart flow three threads of life's blood, a trail that descends vertically and makes vulnerability and the fear of suffering sacred.
The stricken place is pierced by a blade of gold and blue light. It is the event that splits, that wounds, but at the same time illuminates. The gold here is not decoration, it is the intervention of the divine, of destiny, of love that when it arrives, asks no permission.
6. BARBARA CAMPINOTI
«Beating of wings»
Technique: Graphite, watercolor, colored pencils, gouache on 300 g watercolor paper
Size: A3 (29.7 × 42 cm)
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The work was born from the memory of the artist's fear of butterflies throughout her childhood and adolescence. For her, leaving the house had become a nightmare: she feared that a butterfly might appear around every corner and come towards her. Over time, this fear began to limit her daily life and profoundly affect her life.
The little girl depicted in the work preserves and tells the story of this fear. Through the act of releasing the butterflies, she transforms the nightmares and anxieties of the past into something visible, finally letting them go. The butterflies thus become a symbol of fear itself, but also of its overcoming and the possibility of breaking free from what has held her captive.
7. CARLO DE WALLY
«Happy Birthday Adam III»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 90 cm
Price: €3,400
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Adam is the embodiment of primordial man, the firstborn. He reflects perfection, uniqueness, and beauty, inspired by the "religious model of the creator." In his representations, the artist seeks to express "this truth" through his outstretched hand, a symbol of his "standing firm in this spot." His distance from other living beings is also unique, marked by a marked sense of stupidity and vanity: no other being on our planet, in fact, is capable of using its senses—however advanced—for its own slow self-destruction, to the point of claiming this as the "meaning of life."
The art of reproduction requires multiple genders, at least two. The seemingly weaker sexes—women and transgender people—can only be defined as such by their inability to physically resist males, considered the stronger sex. In our minds and hearts, however, the reality is quite different: if the collective actions of all genders on our planet had had equal say in the past, the results would certainly have been different and probably better, as would our world.
The artist's works capture the situations of the present. Adam is Adam: fire, water, garbage, and external control. To mark this milestone, the artist celebrates Adam and his "years" through four works. Happy birthday, Adam!
The work thus harks back to the Anatomy of Fear, analyzing the most subtle and visceral form of anguish: the awareness of human self-destruction. Through the primordial figure of Adam, the artist dissects the fragility of a humanity imprisoned in its own vanity, exposing the fear of oppression, external control, and the blind drift toward contemporary chaos.
8. DAN LUGALS
«What flavor should I give to this steam?»
Technique: Mixed media (oil pastels on brown paper, Volterra earth mixed with China ink, stitching with black plastic thread and fixing on recycled cardboard burned on the sides)
Measurements: Display dimensions
Price: €200
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Fear: initially, it's an emotion. A physical reaction to danger that prepares the body for flight or, conversely, immobility. The heartbeat accelerates, the hair stands on end (a primal reflex to challenge the attacker), the muscles tense in preparation for flight. Recent studies agree that an emotion lasts less than a minute. After this time, it transforms into a feeling, and it is then our mind that keeps it alive. Fear. If we consider it as an energy, things get interesting: on a universal scale, it is irremediably opposed to love. Like black and white, shadow and light: one destroys, the other creates. Fear asserts that everything is impossible; love, on the other hand, maintains precisely the opposite.
The work: it all started with the text. During his participation in Art Week Volterra 2026, while driving between San Gimignano and Volterra, Dan Lugals reflected on the competition's theme: fear. Words surface. A text takes shape. Then, using the tools available, he creates the work on brown paper with oil pastels, adopting a deliberately raw, urgent, and essential style. He then thinks about the series he's currently working on, "Ethereal Vapors." In this series, the white form (an obsession of his work) is in a state prior to birth. It exists without existing in the material... In his opinion, this series is the most suitable to address the competition's theme. He also uses Volterra earth mixed with Indian ink, creating a sticky impasto to give the surface texture and roughness. The text and drawing are then joined together with black plastic thread and fixed onto recycled cardboard, some of whose edges he burns. He calls it “What flavor to give to this steam?” as a question addressed to those observing the work and this filigree proposal: it's up to you to decide.
9. ENZO PETRARCA
«TR5»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas, plaster, clay and jute
Dimensions: 80 × 120 cm
Price: €400
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The work stages the dramatic coexistence between the individual and an internal threat that attacks his existence.
Through a cold palette and tormented material, the canvas evokes the threat of a shadow that inhabits the body and mind.
It represents the loop of thought, the anguish and the suction of perception.
TR5 is a still image of an invisible struggle.
The canvas documents the moment when the body becomes armor and the mind becomes a vortex to resist that black line, an unnatural evil, in a desperate attempt to isolate it.
10. FEDERICO FIORENZANI
«Anesthesia»
Technique: Photography
Measurements: 50 x 70 cm
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The photograph, titled Anesthesia, is an abstract and primal representation of the fear of living and depression.
The image captures a moment of absolute surrender and total self-isolation. The nude figure, caught in an extreme, tense fetal pose, seems to collapse, almost as if trying to disappear to avoid facing reality. This ancestral and vulnerable posture transforms the body into a closed organic form, a desperate refuge to escape further harm.
The choice of black and white and the minimalist composition accentuate this sense of detachment. The "gray fog" described by the artist becomes a visual and mental condition: a suspended atmosphere that constantly envelops the mind, rendering everything undefined and muffled, from the most intense emotions to material things. There is no external enemy, but a profound anesthesia that freezes vitality and transforms existence into a shadow, where every contour fades and the only truth that remains is the body curled up in self-defense.
11. FEDERICO FORNARO
«The Oracle»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 50 × 60 cm
Price: €250
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Fear does not stem from the unknown itself, but from the negative projections our mind creates to fill that void. The Oracle makes this internal mechanism visible; it does not reveal destiny, but shows that the future we fear is constructed by the fears we harbor in the present. It transforms divination into revelation at the exact moment when the vision of the future collides with the paralysis of fear. He does not "see" the world with his physical eyes, but is immersed in a state of trance. His posture is tense, his hands clenched in an instinctive defensive gesture. The composition does not depict concrete events, but incomplete forms, distorted faces, and liquid shadows: the visual embodiment of anxiety and terror for what is to come. Traditionally a figure of power, in this work he instead becomes a victim of his own knowledge: fear arises from the impossibility of changing what has been seen. The observer of the work is not a simple external witness. The viewer's face overlaps with that of the oracle, suggesting that the visions arise from the viewer's profound anxieties. The stillness of the painting captures the very essence of terror: the moment of "freeze" (paralysis) when the mind recognizes an impending threat and can neither flee nor fight.
12. GIANNI ERMINI
«The Inevitable»
Technique: Pencil, ballpoint pen, watercolor and lead sculpture
Dimensions: 81.5 × 46.5 cm
Price: €700
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Projecting the fears of others onto ourselves causes most of our own fears.
All this leads us to create areas of Light and Shadow within our self.
13. GIULIA BELLELLI
«Place of Holding»
Technique: Mixed media on canvas — oil (Payne's Grey and Titanium White), liquid gesso and glazes with abrasion and dissolution interventions
Dimensions: 60 × 80 cm
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
[Project: Geography of Feeling]
What shape does my fear take?
It has no face or specific body. It has the shape of a narrow passage.
In Place of Holding, fear manifests itself as a body instinctively trying to gather itself, to protect its center, while something seems to be preventing it from breathing.
Hands aren't simply a gesture: they are the physical sign of an internal tension. They clasp, seeking containment, but in their very gesture they end up distorting the perception of the body. It's no longer clear where flesh ends and matter begins, where the grasp belongs to the body and where it arises from its perception.
For this reason, the body is not represented as a complete presence. The glazes make it emerge and simultaneously consume it; the plaster and paint construct and erase, allowing areas of light to emerge where the material seems to have thinned.
Fear, then, does not produce a new body: it deforms the one we already inhabit.
It is on this threshold that Luogo del Trattenere is born: a place where everything seems to be trying to breathe, but something continues to hold its breath.
14. GIULIA EFISI
"Birth"
Triptych
Technique: Photographic project: Canson platine fibre rag paper 310 g mounted on a 10 mm Alu Sandwich panel, black passepartout, black American box wooden frame.
Measurements: 40 x 40 cm
Price: 700
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Being born is a radical act. It is the irruption of a new beginning into the immobile fabric of things, the sudden opening of a possibility where there seemed to be none left. It is pain and blood: birth is never a clean gesture, but a threshold crossed at the cost of a tear.
Before birth, there is a state of immobility: it is fear that paralyzes, fixing the body and spirit in a timeless suspension. Fear doesn't just hurt—it imprisons, blocks every impulse, reduces breathing to a held wait. It is an immobility that insinuates itself into both the flesh and the spirit, rendering us helpless, powerless, insignificant in the face of the beauty of life that continues to flow elsewhere, outside of us.
This work recounts that paralysis and its moment of sublimation, of potential transition. The fear that perhaps gives way to an aftermath. It's in that "aftermath" that everything plays out: not in the event that immobilized us, but in how movement returns.
Birth, here, isn't merely biological: it's the breaking of the immobility imposed by fear. It's a hope, a flash of light that comes after the darkness of the impossibility of living—the exact moment when the body, frozen and almost petrified by suffering, finds movement again, and the spirit, imprisoned in its own immobility, finally finds a way out.
The images in this project explore precisely this dichotomy: between the immobility of fear—which petrifies flesh and spirit—and the vital impulse that ultimately permeates both. To be born means to escape this suspension, to regain the possibility of being—and of being again.
15. LEONARDO BANDINELLI
«Beyond Fear»
Technique: Digital mixed media: generative AI and authorial reworking in post-production
Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm
Price: €800
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
A face expressing unease and anxiety. A man immersed in shadow represents the gray and dark regions of the soul, where fear finds space and takes shape. Before him lies a staircase leading to the light. The man prepares to ascend it: the climb thus becomes the symbol of an inner journey, of the attempt to confront and overcome what generates fear within him. The light, at the end of the journey, represents liberation and the end of fear. The work thus speaks of the courage to face one's fears and embark on an inner journey that, from darkness, leads to liberation.
16. MARCO GIANGOLINI
«Hamlet 2.0»
Technique: Instant photography using special lenses
Dimensions: 10,752 × 8,847 cm (Polaroid 600 format)
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Hamlet 2.0 explores the relationship between grief, memory, and technology through the figure of a young man attempting to reconnect with his lost love in a virtual reality. Like a contemporary Hamlet, he contemplates what remains physically of the person, in this case, of his loved one, but refuses to accept the skull as the last possible form of their existence: through the headset, he attempts to restore a face, a voice, a presence. Technology thus becomes a form of denial of grief, suspended between consolation and dependence, leaving open the question: if we could continue to see and speak to those we've lost through a perfect simulation, would we really be capable of letting them go?
17. MARCO GIANGOLINI
«How Deep Is Black?»
Technique: Instant Photography / Still Life (series of 4 shots)
Measurements: Polaroid 600 format
Price: €120 / photo (€350 for a set of 4)
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
How Deep Is Black? explores emotional depth as a fragile space, where sensitivity, introspection, and darkness end up blurring. A black figure observes, approaches, and finally plunges into its own inner depths, until it dissolves within them. Black thus becomes not only a symbol of depression, but a metaphorical measure of how deeply we can feel, suffer, and lose ourselves.
18. MARILENA ZAHIU
«Adâncuri (Depth)»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 70 × 70 cm
Price: €1,200
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
"Adâncuri" explores fear not as a reaction to a concrete danger, but as a state constructed and transformed by our own mind. Sometimes, what scares us doesn't exist outside of us: the mind can create fears, amplify them, hold them captive, or make them disappear. The fragmentation of space and the chromatic tension suggest this instability between the real and the imaginary, between what is and what we perceive. "Adâncuri" is that internal territory where fear can become more real than reality itself.
19. MATTIA DESIDERI
«Katàbasis Anàbasis, The Bond of Phobos and Genesis in Aretè»
Technique: Mixed media, digital composition, traditional collage, analog image transfer and natural coloring with infusion of Hibiscus flowers
Measurements: Diptych: 2 × 33 × 90 h cm (thickness 2 cm)
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
This diptych maps the interior geography of a metamorphosis: the precise and decisive moment in which the human mind unlocks, making the transition from the paralysis of terror to the affirmation of courage. The visual narrative unfolds along a symbolic dichotomy that intertwines soul, movement, and color.
The first panel, "Katabasis and the Bond of Phobos," recounts the descent into the abyss of fear. At the top, an anatomical skull presents, in the position of the amygdala, a red fetus curled up in profound terror. The central body, depicted in a tense pose, bound by rigid red lines positioned at the main joints, are the invisible chains of Phobos, the anguish that blocks gestures, stiffens muscles, and freezes the will in doubt. In the lower section, in the city of Katabasis, a man abandons himself to the abyss with the banner that testifies to his surrender.
In the second panel, Anabasis and Genesis in Aretè, the stasis breaks to make way for the ascent. The amygdala transforms from red to gold, a sign of a new clarity of thought and the genesis of action. The central figure frees herself and casts off the chains that trapped her. It is the birth of Aretè, virtue understood as strength of spirit and active redemption. Below, in the ruined city, a man resumes his journey, overcoming his own shadow with his banner raised toward action, reclaiming his destiny. An act of profound rebirth where vulnerability transforms into pure power.
Created using a mixed media technique, including digital composition, traditional collage, analog image transfer, and natural coloring. Each technique defines the work in its profound language: the traditional collage represents the vortex of emotions that overwhelm the soul, the image transfer represents the primordial essence of trauma, and the natural coloring, created with an infusion of hibiscus flowers, represents the transcendence of the moment in which the spark is born.
20. MATTIA GHINELLI
"A Study of Nudity and Fear"
Technique: Watercolor on cotton paper
Measurements: 26 x 28 cm
Price: €400
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The work stems from an exploration of the concept of rarefaction, understood as a movement in which feeling and emotion emanate from the body. The image takes shape through a combination of contrasting colors and a fluid composition, almost overwhelmed by the tumult of the senses.
Referring directly to the theme of anatomy, the artist chooses the dimension of the nude—the field on which he has focused most of his recent research—identifying in the bare and vulnerable body the most suitable language to give visible form to the state of mind of fear.
21. MELISSA FINOTTO
«Matter»
Technique: Sculpture in raw clay painted with acrylics to simulate bronze
Dimensions: 35 × 30 cm (including pedestal)
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The work encapsulates in the anatomy of that same diseased breast the instinct to survive and fight the fear associated with breast cancer, the cry of strength and courage in facing suffering, the darkness that comes when thinking about the future, and the awareness that we still have so much to live for.
Transforming pain into a positive force, a breast is partially missing because the diseased part, removed, is replaced by a butterfly, a symbol of rebirth. Dedicated to those who fight against illness.
22. NAELMARIS ECHO
«The weight of choice»
Technique: Biomorphic drawing
Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm
Price: €400
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Fear doesn't manifest itself only through terror, tachycardia, or the feeling of losing control. Sometimes it takes a more silent and subtle form: that of a choice.
It insinuates itself into discomfort, pushing us to retreat into our comfort zone, and without realizing it, we find ourselves chained to something that, while making us feel bad, offers us the security of what we know. A prison that distances us from ourselves and the possibility of learning to love ourselves.
Yet, fear itself can put us face to face with a choice: to remain prisoners of what is familiar or to find the courage to look within.
It is then that we can recognize that little creature that lives within us, our inner child, who asks only to be seen, welcomed, and loved. In his hands lies the key to breaking the chains that imprison us.
Because, sometimes, freedom isn't about no longer being afraid, but about choosing not to let fear decide for us.
And perhaps it is precisely from that choice that we can finally begin to love ourselves."
23. NUNZIA CELENTANO
«Epaníemi»
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 × 80 cm
Price: €900
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Fears keep us glued to what hurts us and can slowly push us into the depths of the abyss, sometimes hidden by a gentle caress or a light embrace.
“Epaníemi” comes from the Greek and means “to let go.” Let us let go of the noise of uncontrolled fear, of unfulfilled expectations, of the fear of emptiness, of the fear of knowing what lies beyond what we do not know. So that we can rise again.
24. OLIVER HITZMANN
«The Dance of Love and Fear»
Technique: Stippling art — black ink and gold on paper
Dimensions: 36 × 48 cm
Price: €600
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
To understand fear, you need to rediscover your own heart. It is the shadow cast by a light. It shouldn't be seen as an evil, but as a sign of boundaries being threatened or crossed.
Perhaps there's little comfort in knowing that fear cannot exist without love. Yet we can understand and learn. Emotions tell us a story, and we'd be foolish not to listen.
25. PAOLO PAOLINI
"Xenon"
Technique: Mixed technique charcoal on acrylic quartz and enamels
Dimensions: 60 × 80 cm
Price: €
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
The work represents the phobia of the different, the foreigner. The woman takes refuge in her cultural cage, horrified at the sight of xeno (the dark eggplant).
26. PAOLO TEDESCHI
"Infection"
Technique: Photographic print
Dimensions: 70 × 100 cm
Price: €200
Infection
Italian:
«This face barely needs a name.
Hold my hand.
I feel them coming back.
Time can do nothing against this recurring fear.
Stay here for another minute.
Don't leave me alone."
English:
«This face barely needs a name.
Hold my hand.
I feel them coming back in.
Time can do nothing against this recurring fear.
Stay here one more minute.
Don't leave me alone.»
PAOLO TEDESCHI —
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
[Project text "Infection / Invaders]
Identity is a fragile form, exposed to the otherness that constitutes it. Its permeability is the condition of its relationship with the world, but also the possibility of violation: what can reach us and transform us can compromise our ability to mirror ourselves in a semblance of subjectivity.
Infection and Invaders explore this ambivalence through two faces altered by layers of black paint that obliterate essential parts. The figures persist on the surface, but their integrity is compromised. The eyes overlap, the faces darken, the human presence seems to bear the trace of a progressive expropriation.
27. PAOLO TEDESCHI
«Invaders»
Technique: Photographic print
Dimensions: 70 × 100 cm
Price: €200
Italian
«They enter through every orifice, at night, while you are asleep.
They feed on your flesh at a funeral banquet to which the only one not invited is you: the dead.
They instill music in your ears like drops of poison, until they saturate you with their own infection.»
English:
«They enter through every orifice, at night, while you are asleep.
They feed on your flesh at a funeral banquet to which the only one not invited is you: the dead man.
They instill music into your ears like drops of poison, until they saturate you with their own infection.»
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
[Text of the project "Infection / Invaders"]
Identity is a fragile form, exposed to the otherness that constitutes it. Its permeability is the condition of its relationship with the world, but also the possibility of violation.
Invaders alludes to the penetration of a foreign force, capable of penetrating the subject's defenses and threatening their identity. The distinction between inside and outside thus proves unstable: invasion is possible because identity is permeable.
28. PETRA SOJKOVA MACHONOVA
«David»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Measurements: 30 x 30 cm)
Price: €399
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
David was born from an encounter with Michelangelo's sculpture in Florence. Confronted with a representation of beauty and ideal perfection that has endured the passage of centuries, the artist felt a sudden sense of existential dread.
The work reflects on the passage of time, human fragility, and the disarming awareness of our own finiteness. Rather than portraying the sculpture itself, the painting records the emotional impact of that moment, when admiration transformed into a direct confrontation with mortality.
29. RAFFAELE PIAZZOLLA
«The Fragility of Time»
Technique: Conceptual still life photography on Dibond aluminum (3 mm thick) with steel plates, Photo Matt Fibre 200 paper and Hahnemühle protective spray (certified print 1/10)
Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm
Price: €350
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
This work is entirely the result of my creativity and hard work: from conception to completion, every stage was personally supervised, right down to the final detail, including the photography itself.
The Fragility of Time
Fear is not represented explicitly or spectacularly. It is a silent, almost invisible presence, born from the awareness that our existence has a limit. The hand represents humanity. It is the body, the material, the individual in its earthly dimension. The hand is also what we use to act, construct, grasp, and try to hold onto what is valuable. In this image, however, it appears suspended in a state of helplessness: it can sustain time, but cannot control it. The golden thread represents life. It is precious, fragile, and thin. It envelops the hand like an indissoluble bond with existence. Its golden color recalls the value of life, while its fragility recalls its delicacy. The thread represents what keeps us tied to existence and, at the same time, what inevitably binds us to the passage of time. The hourglass represents time. A single hourglass, a single flow: the sand falls slowly and inexorably. The hand supports it, almost as if the man holds time in his hands, but cannot stop its movement. The flowing sand thus becomes time, progressively consuming life. We possess the awareness of time, but not the power to control it. Flesh, gold thread, glass, and sand thus become the anatomy of fear: man, life, fragility, and time.
30. RENZO BUGGIANI
«BLACK MONO-LITE Vol. 8»
Technique: Acrylic, stucco and gesso on canvas
Dimensions: 70 × 50 cm
Price: Not for sale
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
BLACK MONO-LITE Vol. 8 represents the final chapter in a cycle of eight works from the "BLACK MONO-LITE Series." This research stems from an instinctive process where gesture and material guide the architecture of the image. Through a dense layering of plaster, stucco, and a deep, visceral black, glimpses of white and subtle chromatic variations of gray emerge, generating a palpable visual and spatial tension. The entire series is structured through "volumes," inspired by the rhythmic sequence of motion pictures: each work has a life of its own while remaining part of a larger choral narrative. Vol. 8 stands as the synthesis of this journey—an investigation of contrast, texture, and the time of painting, where the surface of the canvas becomes an indelible trace of gesture, memory, and profound restlessness.
31. ROSWITA HEIDRICH
«Scars»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas (with frame)
Dimensions: 60 × 80 cm
Price: €1,200
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Never be afraid to show your scars—the visible ones and the ones hidden beneath the surface. Every scar tells a story. A story of fears faced, obstacles overcome, and moments of vulnerability. They remind us that fear is a natural part of life, but also that it doesn't have the last word. Scars aren't symbols of weakness. They are traces of courage, resilience, and personal growth. They bear witness to the battles we've fought and the strength we've discovered along the way. Be strong. Be bold. Be proud. Stand up for what matters to you.
32. ROSWITA HEIDRICH
«Mixed Emotions»
Technique: Acrylic on canvas (with frame)
Dimensions: 60 × 80 cm
Price: €1,200
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Inspired by the intensity and contrasts of New York City, "Mixed Emotions" was born from a period of reflection following a return home. New experiences often bring with them curiosity and excitement, but also uncertainty and vulnerability. The work explores the tension between attraction and hesitation, between the desire to discover and the instinct to cling to the familiar. Fear, in this context, isn't about danger, but about the exact moment we realize that new experiences can change the way we see the world—and, perhaps, ourselves.
33. VANESSA MANCINI
«Tacitum dolorem»
Technique: Ink and natural pigments
Measurements: 40 × 50 cm (including frame)
Price: Not for sale (private collection)
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
After the loss of her partner, the artist spent a long period away from everything, even herself. When she returned to creating, she felt the need to confront what had happened: death, absence, and that unfillable void that remains when a life is suddenly taken away.
The result was the depiction of the Dark Lady, stripped of traditional imagery. The figure rides through a barren forest astride her skeletal steed, wrapped in her cloak, silent and cautious. She appears neither proud nor triumphant: she is afraid, terribly afraid. The horse's tears are not simply tears, but represent the deep wound left by the irreversible act of separation.
In this inverted vision, it is not humans who fear Death, but Death itself who fears the life it is about to interrupt. It knows that its action not only brings the end, but also leaves behind pain, absence, and memory, breaking a bond that can never be mended. Death thus becomes a figure capable of hesitation, gripped by anguish and terror: for the first time, it is not only the one who takes away, but above all the one who seems to understand the weight of what it is breaking, and is terrified by it.
The forest serves as a backdrop, a suspended space for this passage, while the frame, created specifically for the work, amplifies its symbolic dimension by configuring itself as a dark, pointed threshold, a barrier between what remains and what is lost.
Tacitum Dolorem is the story of a silent pain, but also of the strength of life, which, precisely because it is fragile and destined to end, becomes infinitely precious. Perhaps even Death, faced with the strength of life, can hesitate.
34. ANTONIO NASTRO
"The fear of what we don't know"
Technique: Enamel on canvas
Measurements: 50 x 70 cm
Price: €400
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
An unfamiliar, liquid chasm yawns at the center of the composition: the tense human figure, captured at the precise moment of the opening, takes its first steps into the unknown. The use of enamel on canvas lends the surface an almost viscous, metallic sheen, rendering the tunnel not merely a physical space, but a living mental cavity. The work explores the paralysis and primal attraction that ignorance exerts on the human mind: the tunnel's threshold becomes a metaphor for every internal transition, where the terror of uncertainty merges with the dizzying need to move beyond.
35. ANTONELLA SPADA
"Hug"
Technique: mixed media on wooden board 80x100
Measurements: 80 x 100 cm
Price: €990
Full Text / Concept of the Work:
Inspired by the sculpture of the Rape of Polyxena in the Loggia dei Lanzi, this painting is rooted in a violent act. In the artist's vision, however, the work becomes a reflection of the fear of abandonment and the profoundly human need to cling to one another so as not to disappear. It is the story of a conflict that becomes a truce, offering refuge to our deepest fears.
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