As a pioneer of the Arte Povera movement, Gilberto Zorio is a figure of prime importance in the history of artistic avant-garde in Italy and on the international contemporary art scene. His long-term passion for alchemy and chemistry with their mesmerising processes of transformation and transmutation is one of the main sources of the remarkable potency of Zorio's visual inventiveness alongside his indefatigably experimental drive.

With a sense of wonder and amazement pervading his work, Zorio has been continuously exploring the interstice realm between imagination, dream and manifest perceptible phenomena. Defining himself as an alchemist-archaeologist, his universe is filled with awareness about dynamics, transience and mutation, fusion and inscription, about the endless actions of time, space and chemical agencies and the impermanence of all things. His fascination for such deep and conceptual subject matters as the energetic and cosmic fields or the spiritual essence of the human being expresses itself in his constant use of substantial elements as catalysts for creativity along with universal archetypal forms and symbols such as the five-pointed star-shape figure, known as the pentagram.

- Stella di Rame su Pergamene
is a large-scale piece composed of three horizontally joint leather scrolls of a glowing orange-ochre colour. On the central part, a large incandescent star is inscribed into the parchment. The star is made of five copper isosceles triangles, assembled around a pentagon. The remnants of Zorio's use of phosphorus and fire to fuse the malleable electrical conductor metal with the organic tanned leather are visible through the chromatic transformations produced by the ephemeral combustion process. The deep black areas around the star's core, borders and inside its right points, the central purple zones, the white emanations and flashes all around it enhance its powerful energetic and iconic presence.

KS