Variable dimensions, acrylic on canvas, plexiglass, glass, salt, water. 2010

On the occasion of the traveling exhibition Osservatorio 3 – Progetto Stirone – promoted by the Accademia di Brera, I developed this work. It is an installation in which I sought a dialogue between the history of the area and the theme of the exhibition focused on the relationship between art and alchemy.

The exhibition was held between June and July 2010 in the medieval villages of Vigoleno and Scipione.

In the Middle Ages, in Scipione, salt was produced through a process of extracting salt water from wells near the village. The salt water was then boiled and evaporated to obtain the precious commodity.

A process that can recall some of the operations carried out by alchemists to purify the raw material and thus obtain gold.

The four colors of the canvases are precisely the four colors of the alchemical phases that the matter had to go through in order to be purified. In the cups, which gradually rise from the ground with a movement that recalls an asceticism, I placed salt water, increasingly saturated brine and in the last one the final product, salt. I therefore combined the alchemical process, which through four phases purifies and redeems the impure and corrupted matter, with the process of extracting salt water that gradually transforms until it becomes salt. A further connection between the two processes can be noted in the fact that both aimed at gold: salt was in fact considered as precious as gold, so much so that it was called “white gold” in past centuries.