Fato’s work meanders in the space where sky and earth do not belong to the word; it lights the village via an ancient-flame, nurtured through the lens of art and the verses of Giovanni della Croce. In the centuries-old medieval hamlet, the term “fuochi” referred to resident families, so Fato, with Fiamma d’Amore Viva, returns to the theme, marking an intimate space and bring about vibrant moments open to interpretation. Simultaneously, Fato reconnects to the metaphorical communicative function of the flame, from the watchtowers. In the Fortezza, some works at the center of actions documented and projected inside one of the towers see their meaning deepened through signs of transit, both of recent history and of the present. In the west tower, a sculpture, keeping its memory alive, meets the flame. Meanwhile, at the top of the south tower, a wooden seat with a fire engraved text by Gianni Garrera, read aloud at the inauguration, designates another landscape-lookout point. This is also the case for the work-vessel, hoisted up on the keep and marked by painting residue, regenerated via exposure to the elements. In the village’s tiny streets, three paintings inspired by a votive aedicule with a silver Madonna set in the wall, prompt the visitor to contemplate the indissoluble plot of earth and sky.

Critiquing the concept of uniqueness, Matteo Fato (Pescara, 1979) investigates the continual return and the mystery of concomitance, exploring different orders of reality through the mediation of painting. His art aims to trace the specular knot that binds an object to its image—to the work, that is—and to overcome the heterogeneity of natural and verisimilar things through unnatural joints and unlikely attributes. Painting precedes nature, and here it’s nature that imitates art. The usual relationship between appearance and reality is reversed.