Aprire le zolle - Visioni dal sottosuolo | Primo Marella Gallery

AGOSTINO ARRIVABENE

Aprire le zolle

Visioni dal sottosuolo

Primo Marella Gallery LUgano

Exhibition dates:

21 June - 31 july
Primo Marella Gallery in Lugano is pleased to present, on June 21st, the new exhibition by Agostino Arrivabene, entitled "Aprire le Zolle. Visioni dal Sottosuolo", on the occasion of the summer solstice. Through a play of references between light and shadow, birth and transformation, the artist explores the power of a creative act rooted both in the earth and in the depths of the human soul.

The title of the exhibition draws inspiration from one of Alda Merini's most emblematic poems, "Sono nata il ventuno a primavera", which celebrates rebirth and storm, the meeting between the invisible and the visible. In this profound dialogue with the poetess, Arrivabene traces a symbolic line connecting the spring equinox to the summer solstice, two extremes of a cycle that are reflected in the artistic gesture as a hypotenuse of love.

"Aprire le zolle" is not just a physical act but a metaphysical gesture: to dig, to till, to bring to light what has remained hidden. The works on display seem to germinate from fertile soil, bringing visions to the surface that traverse the underworld and touch upon the unconscious, the tragic, and the mystical. Like Persephone, the goddess who walks between worlds, the artist invites the viewer to discover a realm where light and shadow merge into an abyss of meanings and revelations.

It is an invitation to immerse oneself in a journey that goes beyond the surface, to rediscover the primal force of creation and existence.

The works in the exhibition emerge like relics or oracles from a dark, fertile soil—resonating with themes of decay, transformation, and rebirth. Through them, Arrivabene enacts a ritual of revelation, where painting becomes a threshold between the visible and the invisible, the sacred and the profane, the earthly and the otherworldly.
At the heart of this journey is the myth of Persephone, whose presence is central to both the symbolic structure and the visual language of the show. As goddess of both spring and the underworld, daughter and queen, Persephone embodies the dialectic of return and rupture, of descent and emergence. Her figure weaves together the seasonal cycles with the psychic cycles of transformation—the transition from innocence to awareness, from captivity to sovereignty.

In works such as Érgot and L'erbario, Persephone appears not as a passive victim of abduction, but as an initiatrix, a sovereign figure who has internalized her exile and turned it into fertile power. Her body becomes a site of germination—flowers and roots grow from her wounds, her garments carry the weight of gifts and losses, and her gestures hint at a vegetal, mystical embodiment of memory. She is a goddess of thresholds, and thus, a perfect metaphor for the alchemical process of painting itself.

Arrivabene’s Persephone is not merely represented—she is invoked. She manifests as a layered, palimpsestic icon, rising from earlier, buried works, much like myth rising from collective memory. Her crown of Claviceps purpurea (ergot), the hallucinogenic fungus linked to ancient Eleusinian rites, becomes a scepter of metamorphosis, connecting the visionary to the botanical, the archaic to the hallucinatory.
In L'erbario ("The Herbarium"), the Arcimboldesque homage takes a darker, dreamlike turn: the flowers no longer symbolize mere ornament or vitality, but rather carry a melancholic aura of suspended becoming. This is not a celebration of spring, but a longing for it—a spring dreamt from the shadows. The female figure at the center, silent and archetypal, becomes a floral mask of nostalgia and cyclical time, where Persephone is both daughter and mother, memory and prophecy.
Throughout the exhibition, Arrivabene constructs a universe where ancient myths are not reinterpreted but reactivated. His Persephone is a cipher of transformation, a figure in which the personal, the mythological, and the spiritual merge. Through her, we are invited to traverse a territory where beauty is sacred and terrible, creation is born from decay, and every painting becomes a ritual object—an offering to the mystery of being.
Agostino Arrivabene is an artist whose research is based on a profound knowledge and assimilation of the classical pictorial tradition, matured through years of study and frequentation of European museum collections. Rather than adopting the languages of modernity, he has embarked on an anachronistic and conscious path, aimed at re-establishing a dialogue with the aesthetics and metaphysical dimension of ancient art.

Inspired by masters such as Leonardo, Dürer, van Eyck and Rembrandt, Arrivabene has developed a personal style that makes use of ancient techniques such as egg tempera, encaustic and oil glazes, treated not as nostalgic homages, but as alchemical tools capable of transfiguring pictorial matter. The artisanal preparation of pigments and supports underscores his almost ritualistic relationship with artistic practice.

His works, dense with symbols and esoteric suggestions, evoke worlds suspended between the visible and invisible, drawing inspiration from the Renaissance Wunderkammern, treasure chests of natural, artificial and miraculous wonders. His paintings inhabited by hybrid beings, anatomical elements and visionary architecture explore themes of death, transformation and spiritual rebirth: pain becomes a fertile wound from which light sprouts.
The tension between sacred and profane runs through his entire production, which is presented as a form of visual meditation, an invitation to contemplation and inner recollection. In this sense, Arrivabene's art is not only figurative, but also philosophical and initiatory: the painting is a place of revelation, a threshold between worlds, where personal intuition merges with archetypal and mythical imagery.

In an age marked by superficiality and rapidity, his work represents a silent but powerful resistance: a return to inwardness, slowness and the sacredness of art making.
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Works
AGOSTINO ARRIVABENE

Aprire le zolle

Visioni dal sottosuolo

PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY LUGANO

Saturday 21st june

12:00 pm

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