The contemporary art exhibition entitled “Connessioni” by artists Diego Ganci and Ornella Schirò will be inaugurated on Friday 31 May 2024 at 5pm at Villa Niscemi, in Palermo. The event will be presented by Dr. Antonella Galati. Speakers will include: the mayor of Palermo, Roberto Lagalla, the mayor of San Giuseppe Jato, Giuseppe Siviglia, the president of Rotary Palermo Libertà Annalisa Guercio and the photographer Zino Citelli. The exhibition will be on display from 31 May to 10 June 2024 and can be visited from Monday to Saturday from 10am to 6.30pm and on Sunday from 10am to 12.30pm. The event is sponsored by the municipality of Palermo, the municipality of San Giuseppe Jato and by the Rotary of Palermo Libertà.
After the experience gained through collective and personal exhibitions, the two artists try their hand at this new project: two ways of “impressing” art, but a common point of view on “feeling” art: this is where it comes from “Connections”. Ornella Schirò and Diego Ganci have selected a total of 28 works including canvases and collages that best represent their way of experiencing art.
The biography of the two artists
Diego Ganci was born in Palermo on 10 October 1996. After graduating in figurative arts at the Liceo Artistico Vincenzo Ragusa and Othama Kiyohara in Palermo, also in his hometown, he obtained a doctorate in Contemporary Sacred Art at the Academy of Fine Arts with the thesis “Pop Art in the work of ClaesOldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Paul McCarthy and Jeff Koons”. He is now majoring in Art History at the University of Palermo. He has participated in several collective exhibitions, both as an artist and as Artistic Director. In 2019 he exhibited his works at the Venice Biennale, in the prestigious site of Palazzo Zenobio.
Ornella Schirò was born on 25 July 1969 in San Giuseppe Jato (Palermo). She, the artist, has a diploma as a master of art in the Mosaic section and subsequently obtained her artistic maturity at the Mario D’Aleo art high school in Monreale. Over the years from 1990 to 2020, you created mosaics, artistic stained glass windows (sandblasted and/or decorated engravings) and paintings on wood and canvas. The integration of recycled materials, extra artistic on canvas painted in oil or acrylic colours, are the dialogue between matter and colour. The artist has had collective exhibitions in the past, but also two personal ones: one in April last year at the former Real Fonderia Oretea in Palermo and another in September 2023 in San Cipirello, in the province of Palermo. And again, in 2023, you were awarded the “Teodorico Prize” for Art and Culture at the Ravenna Art Gallery & Venice Art Gallery with two works: Audofleda and Guarigione.
L’art of Diego Ganci and his men collage
“My art is poetic revelation of the invisible. Images as an introspective mirror of the world and of man. Visual poems as intimate verses of life” explains the artist.
“In my work I often speak using the word “poetry” but I don’t mean poetry in the sense of versification, rather as that something that lies behind, the most hidden part. For me, images are a research tool to be able to get to the most intimate part of the image itself, that is, the most mysterious, enigmatic, unknown part.
The Mystery, the Unknown are all characteristics that interest me and which are present in life as well as in my works but the Enigma is what holds everything together. For me, a work of art that possesses a sense of enigma retains a great balance and attractive force that is capable of supporting the entire work.
I defined the Enigma as “the long, suspended breath that sustains an entire life. It is where the time of silence and the silence of time is.”
For me a work of art must be direct, clear but at the same time not entirely. An artist does not have to give answers because she does not have to solve dilemmas of some kind, she has to offer new visions and food for thought from other perspectives.
It is true that collage is an art of assembly but I strip the image to get to its poetic part and the deeper image that hides within itself. Once I arrive at its poetic revelation (the purest part) I enter into a cognitive dialogue in which the same image (stripped) later reveals to me its new message which I model as if I were a “sculptor of the invisible”.
I am a witness. The image speaks to me, it suggests to me, it is a tool that allows me to read poetry, it allows me to observe, know and live in the silent mystery of life, the essence and suspension of the soul. I make my vision art, accessible to everyone. My works are a mirror, they are introspection, they are reflections, they are a voice, they are self-portraits and portraits of man and life, they are my wounds, they are my inner gaze, they are letters that I have written and kept in my drawers, they are the intervals between one heartbeat and another. I strip the image, I strip the world, I strip myself entirely.
I wish to reach the “silence of the world”. Maybe in that moment I can finish making art, maybe that’s where real art and real life can have new sounds and new images; where everything is suspended as if in a theatrical silence which, in its drama, reveals the unknown and the invisible part finally becomes visible.
My creations are my testimonies within this poetry that I live and try to know and finally bring out. It is so precious that it is behind everything and I must delicately get to know it before showing it. It is a work of patience and love. I am an artist because I see. This art of mine is a desperate and silent search for something that transports me but I don’t know where it will take me, perhaps to discover the unknown or perhaps the journey itself is the unknown. I am visiting a new world, I feel compelled to represent it and show it as I see and feel it. My art is an open book. It is a verb without any tense.”
The art of Ornella Schirò and her canvases
“Having exhibited in Milan, Paris, Ravenna and Rome made me bring the colors of my homeland “outside” in a completely unusual way. And above all, every experience is a new departure” explains the artist.
Ornella Schirò talks about her art: “All my artistic experiences come together in my work: painting, mosaic and decoration on wood and glass often intertwine. I am always in continuous and constant technical research, because through it I “excavate” what I define as the interior, what I cannot see using only my senses. I take care of the details and it’s mutual care. The recycled material I use always communicates something to me, even before its transformation, before I cut it out and color it, I feel that it has a new life. Then I “write” through the symbolic value of the shapes and colors on the canvas.
I try to represent feelings with the same intention: observe, reflect, dig without ever being aggressive, without ever forgetting the tact one must have towards feelings (one’s own and/or others). Touch becomes a “surgical” use of materials, technical, chromatic and material convergence, without ever disrupting the harmonious spatial arrangement.
Geometry is always in harmony with other shapes: abstract, floral, sinuous or figurative are shapes designed to give life to human feelings and the elements of nature. The idea of giving a “form” to the four elements is fundamental for me. The search for the “form of the human soul” was an essential element in my first personal pictorial DNA “Dialogue Nature Art” both artistic/pictorial and emotional research. I created “Boats” because this is how I imagine my Soul, a vessel, a little gondola, a little moon/canoe. A strong soul, who has had wonderful encounters and suffered very painful clashes. Continuous and constant research, which continues through the discovery of going “beyond the skin”.
Going further, connecting with the part that is not “external” but internal, the one under the skin, which reaches the human soul. CONNESSIONI represents for me an encounter with an art that I admire and with an artist that I respect. It represents the connection of two generations, two distinct worlds but which give a single energy thanks to their different peculiarities. Our artistic worlds confront and inspire each other.”
