23 April – 10 May 2026
Opening Thursday 23 April 2026, at 8:30 pm

The term “essence”, from the Latin essentia, was probably coined to translate a Greek word that in philosophy means “substance”. In fact, it is in the thought of the ancients that we find the concept of essence understood as “that for which a certain thing is what it is” and cannot be otherwise. Essence thus indicates the substance of a given thing, the intimate nature of reality or what it really is. Not coincidentally, we also find the lemma in the botanical field, where “essence” is used as a synonym to specify the different varieties of trees: the woody essences, in fact, are cataloged in order to their fragrance and the very peculiar characteristics that are distinguished in the individual species, emphasizing for each one the uniqueness and unmistakable aroma.

The exhibition Living Essences by Marialuisa Fontana (Bovolone, VR, 1966) takes inspiration from these reflections to bring into us the very material of its forms: wooden sculptures that tell of souls that smell of their essence. His works, in fact, show shapes found by digging inside an organic material that is always alive and versatile, of marked lightness, resistance and dynamism, which seems to be animated by a presence in constant movement, as it has a structure that continues to interact with the environment even if it is subject to cutting.

In this process of “moving”, of removing to find essential shapes within a living essence, we understand that the art of carving wood has to do with love for trees, for all that variety of essences that constitute the non-replaceable lung of our existence. When the barkless soul of these essences is intertwined in a double bond with the soul of those who model their forms, an inseparable relationship is born that is like a spell. Fontana thus models his works guided by the deep bond with this raw material, following with the help of the tools of the trade the curvature of wood as a sooths a soother follows an underground watercourse. The soft and sinuous shapes then suggest intimate images, revealed more than sought, that the wood itself suggested and that his hand sensed. Living Essences, therefore, is an exhibition that invites the viewer’s gaze also to investigate the voids left by its forms, where it is in turn possible for him to intuit a game of weights and balances between what is stripped of the superfluous and this comes to life in a fascinating flow of harmonic, flexible and dynamic forms.

Finally, Fontana’s sculpture preserves in its practice the secrets of a complex and never banal relationship with the fascination with the material and the plastic challenges that it represents behind an apparent simplicity: the forms found-created are flames in the making without combustion, vital flows where the knots are opportunities and openings for new points of view and possibilities, solid yet light columns supported by the presence of a fresh and mature feminine energy together, capable of roughing, filing, removing, revealing.

– From the critical text edited by Erica Romano