By Emilio Ferro
From June 8, 2024, Emilio Ferro presents MIRACLE, a site-specific installation conceived for the Chapel of San Rocco, located along the road that leads from the top of the hill to the famous Sanctuary of Vicoforte, as part of the project “Landandart – andar per arte” created by the cultural association VIA.
The artist, who has always been attracted to themes that interweave the profound implications between human beings and nature, man-made and natural landscapes, light and shadow, sound and silence, on this occasion creates a work that projects the materiality of nature toward mystical transcendence. Ferro starts from the landscape to imagine new trajectories that traverse the architecture of the ancient building and suggest unexplored paths.
The first element of the installation consists of a metal structure of suspended light, with a pointed shape, with a total development of more than 18 meters, which crosses the chapel’s interior space projecting outwards and pointing the way to the sanctuary. In the outer space behind, a large tree supports a long metal line of light of more than 6 meters: a generating force that germinates from the ground and, thanks to the gentle guidance of the branches, directs itself toward the Chapel, to complete its path in the luminous arrow that ideally guides today’s pilgrim.
The irregularities of natural lines mingle with sharp geometric forms, creating a dynamic balance between opposing forces. A physical and at the same time mystical experience that Emilio Ferro transfers into his work where the warmth and evocative power of light is intertwined with the metallic element, whose strength he harnesses to the point of sublimation.
The artist is inspired by the pictorial field created by Mattia Bortoloni in the Sanctuary of Vicoforte: that very immense fresco painted under the largest elliptical dome in the world, where the sublime technique of scenographic artifices increases in the observer the desire for transcendence already inspired by the tromp-l’oeil scattered over an area of more than six thousand square meters. An impetus to spiritual asceticism that in Ferro’s work is transformed into light, matter as elusive as ever, which from the enclosed space of the Chapel of San Rocco finds a way out into the sky.
A sound intervention created by the artist for the occasion is completing the installation: after recording the magnetic fields present in the Chapel of San Rocco and the sanctuary, and the sounds coming from the surrounding landscape, Ferro sampled some fragments of them to compose the psychoacoustic soundtrack that embraces his work.
Chapels such as that of San Rocco, scattered throughout the Monregalese territory, constituted in ancient times a sort of map that pilgrims heading to the Sanctuary of Vicoforte used as reference points in their itinerary. Around the 17th century, thousands of faithful faced long and difficult journeys to reach this place of worship, which became famous for its numerous miracles and whose importance was comparable to the modern sanctuaries of Lourdes and Medjugorje. The spiritual quest, accompanied by the hope of witnessing a miracle, gave this journey a deep and symbolic significance. Similarly, today the contemporary pilgrim undertakes the journey into nature and art in search of extraordinary sensations, of grounding, but also of discovery and elevation. A profoundly transformative experience.
