“Everything invisible seeks a shape. Even air, if observed long enough, begins to take form.”
In an age dominated by the speed of images and the impermanence of the digital, The Air Had a Shape offers a space for slowness and contemplation. It is a liminal territory where two artists — Anton Alvarez and Giuseppe Lo Schiavo — explore, from opposite yet complementary directions, the tension between what is material and what is mental, between body and simulation, between gesture and perception.
The exhibition takes its title from a poetic paradox: the idea that even air — weightless, formless, intangible — could assume a shape, a structure, a presence. After all, what we perceive as empty is never truly empty. It is crossed by forces, memories, invisible tensions. It is the space between two objects. The silence between two words. The moment just before contact.
Through very different means, Alvarez and Lo Schiavo construct objects and images that inhabit this interstitial space. Their works seem to emerge from an interior and suspended dimension, where air becomes the true common medium — not merely what surrounds things, but what defines them.
Anton Alvarez works with matter as if it were a living organism. His sculptures appear to be shaped by natural forces, yet they are the result of a meticulously orchestrated mechanical process. His colorful totems are formed through a custom-built extrusion system, where the artist’s control merges with the unpredictability of the machine. Each work becomes an autonomous presence — as if the material had found its own final posture. The form crystallizes at the very moment the gesture breaks — like a breath suspended in air.
Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, on the other hand, explores the evocative power of simulated imagery. His digital scenes are silent windows into imaginary spaces, where classical and symbolic objects float in timeless environments. A bust, a fruit, a piece of architecture — all immersed in a rarefied atmosphere, charged with suspended tension.
Light, emptiness, and horizon become sculptural elements. His images do not depict action; they depict anticipation — the moment before, or after, something happens.
In the dialogue between these two artists, a profound resonance emerges — one made of subtle echoes, structural analogies, and formal intuition. On one side, the physical and instinctive explosion of matter; on the other, the mental and virtual construction of image. Yet both attempt to shape what has no form: air, light, waiting, memory.