Valeria Vaccaro’s technical mastery and her fascination with fire took center stage once again in the solo exhibition FUOCO CAMMINA CON ME, curated by Ivan Quaroni. The show featured previously unseen works from the Controsenso and Tree of Life series, alongside her renowned pieces from Marmiferi, Urban Platform, Handle With Care, Aver Cuore, and Non Brucio.
FUOCO CAMMINA CON ME
What has always attracted her, she explains, is the mystical essence of this element, its magical, primordial significance, and its purifying power. It is the action of fire that Valeria Vaccaro masterfully sculpts. Her works capture the fleeting moment when combustion affects the object. It is a quick, almost intangible instant, and because of this transience, the artist has chosen a material that is the exact opposite of these concepts: the white marble of Carrara.
Common objects are the ones that burn: packaging crates, matches, pallets, and even wooden planks, which, when sculpted in marble and subjected to the combustion process that the artist skillfully recreates, transform into works of art. Fire thus becomes a metaphor for renewal, capable of turning the everyday into a work of art. However, it also symbolizes transience, metamorphosis, and fragility. These are the themes that Vaccaro’s works address: from the Marmiferi, match-shaped sculptures that, when placed in sequence, illustrate the progression of combustion and evoke the idea of the passage of time, to the Handle With Careand Urban Platform series, where the concept of regeneration-destruction takes on a more environmental character.
Controsenso is the title of the new sculptures presented in FIRE WALK WITH ME. In these works, Vaccaro establishes the encounter between the fragility of marble and the fluidity of the lines she carves. Going beyond the very limits of the material, the artist explores an even more conceptual dimension. The apparent wooden planks, actually made of marble, lose their functional purpose and present themselves to the viewer’s gaze as pure patterns to observe, “diagrams of wood grain that fade into abstract designs, thus encouraging the contemplation of the transformative effects of fire, an ambivalent element in which the regenerative secret of the universe resides. That is, its essential impermanence,” as stated in Quaroni’s critical text.
FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO CONTEMPORARY TIMES
Certainly, the use of marble and the imitation of reality might lead one to think that Vaccaro draws inspiration from the great sculptural tradition of Greek mimesis, and in part, that is true. However, this ancient tradition has hybridized over time with the trends of conceptual art. Therefore, Valeria Vaccaro’s work goes beyond mere reproduction of forms, as Quaroni himself states in the critical text, citing the great Viennese art historian Ernst Gombrich, that the work of mimesis is not merely a “work of observation, but rather of incessant experimentation.” It is not simply about replicating a form, but about capturing its essence.
Valeria Vaccaro in FIRE WALK WITH ME confronts us with the uncertainty of our time and her extraordinary technical skill, where marble conceals itself under the deceptive guise of wood. In this intense solo exhibition, we see her artistic exploration go beyond mere well-presented imagery: what interests her above all is to draw our attention to situations that create imbalance and thus provoke questions. True art, in fact, does not conclude with answers but disrupts thought and overturns convictions.
BIOGRAPHY
Valeria Vaccaro was born in Turin in 1988. After attending the Artistic High School, she studied sculpture at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Since 2005, she has exhibited regularly in solo and group shows across Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Montenegro, and has taken part in numerous art fairs.
Between 2013 and 2015, she participated in the traveling European Biennial JCE Jeune Création Européenne. In 2015, her work was featured in Exhibit in Turin and at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Castle of Rivara. In 2017, she received a Special Mention from the City of Turin during the CBM Art Prize and was also among the winners of the ArTeam Cup 2017.
In 2021, she was selected to exhibit several of her sculptures as part of BAG – Bocconi Art Gallery in Milan. In 2022, she won Second Prize in the 9th Edition of the VAF Foundation Award—granted by the prestigious German foundation committed to promoting innovative approaches in contemporary Italian art and showcasing them in Germany.
She lives and works in Turin, Italy. Throughout her practice—both in sculpture and in two-dimensional works—Vaccaro elevates ordinary objects to a higher level of perfection. In her art, fire does not act as a destructive force, but rather as a creative one: a catalyst for transformation, capable of shaping marble, her preferred material.
At PUNTO SULL’ARTE, Varese, Italy