Gleam of a Silent Ecstasy : Alessandro Sicioldr | solo exhibition at HOBAN ARTRIUM

La Cittadella draws us into a dream. A sleeping figure beholds a fortified city guarded by angelic beings, perhaps the winged genii of Greek tradition.

They evoke Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, where the innermost chambers are reached not through conquest, but through surrender. For Teresa, the castle symbolizes the soul imagined as a luminous crystal with many rooms representing stages of spiritual growth.

The journey inward leads to union with the divine presence at its center.

Il Nuovo Re emerged differently from the others. Sicioldr let the image form itself on the canvas without conscious control.

For the first time, a collapsed world appeared. Yet from the ruins comes a new birth, signaled by the auspicious image of a golden fruit—the only hope born from a

distant tree. The scene unfolds beneath a summer evening sky.

In an age dominated by utility, speed, and technocratic rationality, painting opens a rare aperture into a poetic realm. It is this refusal of functionalism—this openness to slowness, uselessness, and mystery—that forms the philosophical foundation of both the exhibition and the artist’s wider body of work.

Mystical and religious imagery runs throughout the work, stripped of doctrine and transfigured into a personal symbolic landscape. Marebito departs from the artist’s usual compositional schemes—often reminiscent of Flemish primitives and Italian fresco painters. Here, a single moment of contact is foregrounded: the blue of otherness brushes gently against the interior world of a sleeping or enraptured figure. It may be the purest embodiment of ecstasy.

Le Due Luci
The contradiction of two simultaneous and opposing truths defines this apparition. Emerging from a labyrinth of curtains, a monumental being reveals itself to two unguarded figures, who are blinded by the force of sudden revelation. 
If there is a common thread in all of Sicioldr’s works, it would be the theme of annunciation—a central mystery in the Christian imagination. He believes each work is,

at heart, an exploration of the encounter between two worlds. This is what Robert Johnson called the mandorla.

In a sacred sense, Johnson’s mandorla evokes a space where divine opposites—human and divine, masculine and feminine, shadow and light—are reconciled. It mirrors the ancient almond-shaped mandorla surrounding Christ in glory, signifying both transcendence and incarnation. For Johnson, entering the mandorla is a sacred act of inner integration, where the soul embraces its full, God-given complexity and moves toward spiritual wholeness.

That Indestructible Estate

Sicioldr took the title from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

The figure with the golden hand fills the whole space both subject and landscape.

The paintings of Alessandro Sicioldr arise from precisely this space of silence and descent. They trace the fragile fissures between reason and the unconscious, inviting us into that in-between. His works are not composed visions of a structured world. Rather, they emerge from encounters with forms that rise beyond the reach of conscious thought. Sicioldr does not attempt to contain these images within narrative or symbol. He speaks of his work as a “non-interpretive intimacy,” seeking not meaning, but presence; not resolution, but a sensation yet to arrive.

An Invitation to Silence Sicioldr’s paintings do not demand explanation or comprehension. Instead, they offer a space of encounter, inviting the viewer to step into the pictorial world and meet their own unconscious. The caves in his paintings are entrances to inner worlds; the figures, projections of the viewer’s alternate selves. In this moment of encounter, the viewer is no longer a passive observer but becomes another sacred “visitor” in the landscape of the unconscious.

Though they contain no literal voice, the paintings speak. They do so through form, gesture, and symbol. They invite the viewer not to read, but to feel. Sicioldr’s works are not final statements. They are open propositions, completed only through the viewer’s own inner dialogue. 

The Great Night presents an almost apocalyptic vision. In a barren desert of stone and dust, living beings retreat into underground caverns, perhaps dreaming of distant mountains.

As in Buzzati’s Tartar Steppe, they gaze in silence toward unreachable horizons. Then, a crack appears. A luminous presence arrives, bearing a sun. Enigmatic—perhaps useless in practical terms—but meaningful for those who have learned to wait.

Sicioldr’s compositional logic reveals the influence of the Sienese School of the Middle Ages. In particular, the symmetrical structures and symbolic arrangements seen in the works of Quattrocento painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti have left a profound imprint on his visual planning. To this, Sicioldr adds the bizarre imagination of 15th-century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch and the metaphysical spatiality of twentieth-century Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico.

Sicioldr likewise captures moments of suspended time through silent figures and restrained spatiality. Though Sicioldr borrows classical architecture, mythic symbols, and idealized bodies, these elements are intentionally arranged in an otherworldly and disjointed manner. This creates an unsettling tension between reality and the unconscious. His painting thus seeks out the uncanny: a condition born of the coexistence of the familiar and the strange.

Sicioldr’s work is often described as classical: symmetrical in composition, muted in palette, meticulous in brushwork, and brooding in mood. The town of Tuscania, his lifelong home, was once a major Etruscan city.

The Etruscans, which predates ancient Rome, remains largely mysterious due to the lack of written records. Sicioldr’s paintings share a similarly mysterious and ungraspable quality. The ceremonial structure, recurring human figures, and symbolic logic of Etruscan wall paintings clearly inform his artistic vocabulary. For him, these ancient images are more than stylistic references; they are the roots of his unconscious imagery.

His figures appear human, yet they feel estranged. Their distorted proportions, emotionless expressions, and symbolic ornaments evoke a sense of presence that feels both real and unreal. These beings are what the artist calls “visitors.” They are not drawn from real life, but rather from the traces of ancient memory or from dreams.