Marco Tirelli
, Rome, Italy — Lives and works in Rome, Italy
Marco Tirelli is an artist with a deep sense of what lies beyond. Both his education (set design) and his environment (Rome, Spoleto) laid the foundation for the construction of his poetic and subdued universe of repeated images, that dwells on the border of illusion and reality and delves in the maze of the memory. His practice consists of drawings and sculptures — studies as well as stand-alone works — and large-scale paintings of imaginative and recognisable geometric forms, trapped in arresting contrasts of light and darkness.
About Marco Tirelli
The imaginary in his drawings, sculptures and large canvasses is rooted in sacred or commemorative architecture (archaeological sites, monuments, theatres), but stems from his imagination rather than from nature or actual objects. His mind distils and purifies these architectural elements into subdued, vibrating geometry that becomes an excuse to cross the border between light and shadow. By sublimating physical places in virtual places, he shapes an architectural transit space where nothing is taking place, just expectation and suspension. His goal is to elicit active sensorial and mental participation from the viewer. Tirelli’s body of work breathes an all-enveloping mysticism that was influenced by his studies in set design, the pitch-black Umbrian nights and the metaphysical art of De Chirico and Morandi.
The artist has given us insight in his distillation process: small drawings and sculptures, both studies for his large canvases and stand-alone works, show the different stages in the modelling of his imaginative and eccentric universe.
I’ve always sensed a tension between places, real places, and what lies unseen beyond.