Silent Weaves presents 32 sculptures, made primarily from plaster and ceramic. Bertozzi works with a form of sculptural tattooing, creating effects that lie somewhere between bone calcification and organic concretions of many different kinds. From these surfaces emerges a reflection on time and its ability to alter and transform forms that seem eternal in their classical beauty. Under the sign of metamorphosis, this painstaking process, carried out with the fine point of a burin, is repeated across different ceramic and plaster surfaces. It is an act of constant repetition that always encompasses the dimension of time: a slow contemplation that shapes matter, creating craters and shifting forms that become a measure of time’s invisible passage.

These works evoke a hidden harmony, not immediately perceptible, inviting visitors on an inward journey towards a place where the mind grows still and regains its balance. White is the predominant colour of the sculptures, suggesting purity and tranquillity, and combines naturally with gold to create an intense visual and sensory experience.

Speaking about his use of gold, Zeno Bertozzi explains:

“A golden nest makes me think of rest, tranquillity and shelter from chaos, associated with the image of a primordial home whose walls are made of earth: a refuge that, like a garment, adapts itself to the animal’s body and protects it, something close to a mother’s body. Gold gives even greater importance to this protective space, reinforcing and strengthening it, elevating it to the natural, primal place of dwelling.”

Bertozzi’s sculptures speak of a silent ‘melody’, echoed in the titles of several works: something intangible yet present, a force capable of guiding or comforting us. An invisible dance of sounds and silences tells stories without words but with powerful emotional intensity, as silence itself becomes a form of profound communication, often more powerful than sound.

“In this sense, they remind me of Giya Kancheli’s Symphony of Silence, which explores the concept of silence as a form of music,” curator Raffaele Quattrone observes. “The entire composition is built around pauses, empty spaces and moments of stillness, creating a reflective atmosphere that evokes solitude while also finding protection in silence.”

Bertozzi adds:

“The concept of a weave, like that of a symphony, is connected with writing and signs, but it can also be understood as an arrangement of lines, spaces and volumes that combine to create a visual structure. It is therefore a relationship between forms which, in their simplicity, offer different possibilities of interpretation.”

In Zeno Bertozzi’s work, the invisible becomes a secret melody, heard only by those prepared to ‘listen’: a hidden beauty that finds in silence a safe space where the outside world recedes and art and thought can flourish without distraction. A refuge that does not need to be seen; a ‘shell’ that, like the potter wasp nests appearing in some of the works, protects us from the chaos outside while preserving memories and fragments of a time that is never entirely lost, but continues to exist in invisibility and silence.