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Here, still present, alive within matter
Opening: 3 June, 4–9 PM
The exhibition will be on view from 3 to 16 June 2026, 1–7 PM
Finissage: 16 June 2026, 4–9 PM
Curated by Claudia Ponzi
Critical text by Mauro Valsecchi
Here, still present, alive within matter
You can sense a dense air: a pungent yet warm smell; a few steps forward, then a few steps back. The eyelids quivering because of the luminous fragmentation of an iridescent mass of colour; when the pupils begin to focus on the touches of colour, it feels as though one were looking through a microscope; one more step back — it is impossible to stand still. Three steps forward: up close, one is left incredulous; from afar, amazed. It is a movement back and forth, as emotional as it is physical. La the need is to remain present; the effort lies in finding again the right luminous instant: like a glimmer offered by a cool colour that shyly warms, thanks to the orange reverberation of other colours embracing it; the variation of tone vibrates to the point of making forms of memory appear. For only when light, matter and colour begin to to inhabit the soul, one can feel the importance of experiencing life.
Guido Rocca has chosen to confront existence by intertwining art with the experiences of everyday life. And this art, which he creates and allows to flow into the social sphere, holds a salvific force that goes far beyond the concept of the artwork as a closed and finished object. Indeed, alongside his artistic production, the artist gives educational and formative talks, maintaining a constant commitment to humanitarian associations and sharing his personal experience with the intention of stirring consciences and emotions — a mission he also carries forward through Call to Arts, the association he founded.
Guido Rocca’s research, centered on the use of color, is both tonal and material. His large oil paintings are created through an extensive use of juxtaposed colors, with full, ordered, repetitive brushstrokes that almost never touch the canvas, but rather deposit only color; it is a continuous vertical gesture of the hand, an uneasy yet meticulous dance of the body around the canvas with every chromatic cast. In the end, through the oily substance and the pigment, the painting becomes a sediment of vital energies. After all this work, the paintings turn into mysterious entities: they seem to change substance, like tapestries of precious fabric, or to take on the iridescence of oil stains on asphalt.
The viewer is confronted with gestures and words in color that may seem incomprehensible. But there is no need to decipher them, because estrangement is an effective antidote against the risk to which we are all exposed: that of taking reality for granted, as well as our own gestures and actions. Yet reality is first and foremost interior, and only afterwards created outwardly; indeed, what we see and feel exists because it is all of us who create it. This is the artist’s warning, and there is no creative arrogance in these words, because the sensing of the senses — that is, perception — corresponds to a form of love for the world before it does for oneself: creative energy is not a subjective production, but rather like a thread that connects human beings.
Guido Rocca’s approach never aims to provide a didactic or definitive explanation of the work, but instead focuses on the motivations that led him to act in a certain way. He is not concerned with results; only rarely does he refer to individual works, and his paintings often remain untitled, leaving the viewer the freedom — and the responsibility — to confront them in full autonomy.
The artist accompanies us only to the threshold of vision, revealing his energies as they remain present, mingled with matter, while light has rendered them chromatic. In doing so, an airy and expansive poetic scenario opens up: the artist does not reveal a document of reality, but something at once more natural and more abstract — an affectivity, an empathetic projection of thought toward what resembles him.
In this sense, the artist reflects on the aesthetic and formal gesture: the moment of creation as a perfect synthesis of identity, fragmentation, collectivity, and knowledge.
It seems that those who grasp the greatest unreality are then able to shape the greatest reality: the one that cannot be seen with the eyes.
The artist has found in the world only what he already carries within himself, thus coming to understand the world’s need. And however dizzying this inner gaze may be, because it is ecstatic, there is no despair. Awareness and simplicity are the perfect artistic practice, because we can always address a request to ourselves: our mind is like a coloured map — the map of the entire world — and Guido Rocca portrays things not as we know them to be, but according to that optical and emotional illusion born from the first vision: like looking, with closed eyes, at the sun impressed upon the eyelids.
