In a world dominated by images, Vittorio Pavoncello’s provocation is to take away. To subtract, not accumulate. This concept is the basis for I quadri del silenzio (The Paintings of Silence), the Roman artist’s new solo exhibition curated by Velia Littera, director of the Galleria Pavart. The exhibition opened on July 2 at the Marco Besso Foundation in Rome and will run through August 2.
“This project stems from a moment of reflection, but also from a sense of visual saturation,” Pavoncello explained. “We were used to talking mainly about fake news, but today we can also talk of fake images.” The starting point is the current moment, in which our gaze is constantly stimulated by advertising, design, wars, digital simulations, and productions generated by artificial intelligence. “AI can produce tools of falsification, a sort of fake vision,” the artist observed. “It opens up scenarios that, until recently, we could hardly have imagined.” It is an ambiguous territory where hyperrealism and surrealism often coexist.
Pavoncello’s response comes through painting. “I felt the need to reset and bring our gaze back to a more essential point,” he explained. The silence evoked by the title is a state of attentiveness. It is not an escape from the world but rather a pause within contemporary complexity. “These paintings are not intended to add further noise to the images already surrounding us,” he continued, “but rather to invite reflection and meditation.”
As the curatorial text states, the series consists of autonomous yet interconnected works, “a constellation of independent presences” that find harmony through their dialogue with one another. In some cases, the compositions may recall the logic of a QR code. “A QR code usually points to another image or piece of content,” Pavoncello noted. “In this case, however, the reference is inward.”
Thus, the relationship with the viewer becomes a crucial part of the artistic project. “The visitor, the viewer, is invited to engage in a different kind of experience,” the artist explains. “Rather than passively absorbing an image, as often happens today, they are encouraged to project something of themselves into the work.” The painting thus becomes “almost an object of meditation.”
The decision not to release photographs of the works before the opening is part of this approach. “We do not want images of the exhibition to circulate. Anyone interested is invited to experience it at the Marco Besso Foundation.” “If the work is conceived as a reflection on the visual redundancy that surrounds us, presenting the artworks through additional images beforehand would contradict the exhibition’s very meaning.”
Pavoncello’s connection with the Marco Besso Foundation is the result of a collaboration established over the years. Together with the foundation, he has worked on several projects, including three editions of the Anthropocene exhibition, which involved around one hundred artists. Pavoncello has also developed this relationship through cinema, reflecting the artist’s multifaceted profile as a filmmaker, painter, and writer.
Translated by Caterina Mansani and revised by Elizabeth El Khoury, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.