Virtati l’ha nel foho On the occasion of the Open Tour 2023 initiative in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, the gallery Studio la Linea Verticale presents the duo show Virtati l’ha nel foho, accompanied by critical texts by Lucrezia Ercoli and Maura Pozzati. In the exhibition, fire is identified as the symbol of labor by energy. In Greek, energeia means “at work - in operation - in action,” and it is chosen as the connecting element between the two young artists on display: Giuseppe Francalanza (Modica, 2000) and Jacopo Risaliti (Prato, 2001). This energy, intrinsically laborious, is what allows us and everything we see to not be formless accumulation, but disciplined matter, sculpted according to the shape of our bodies through information. “The work that orders the energy of a body according to a particular form is the condition of its being” (1). Risaliti’s sculptures are the very expression and symbol of the active action of work. The hammer, the apple, and the slabs of marble covered in soot, turning them into a chalkboard, are examples of this. In Francalanza's paintings on canvas, the activity of work is only seemingly at rest under the scorching sun. In truth, it is underground, silent, but continuous, like the pulse of a heart. The truth is with fire because it is perceived as the source that, similarly to the theophany experienced by Moses and described in the Book of Exodus, would hold the Truth, the representable synthesis of Being, the secret of the birth of Life. Where do we come from? We are children of energy and its inner fire. To the common question posed to reality itself by the artists, the simplest answer is given: “I am who I am” (2). (1) Vito Mancuso, L’Anima e il suo destino, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milan, 2007. p.13. (2) Exodus 3:14