Maurizio Valch

Maurizio Valch's painting develops an abstract, symbolic and metaphysical language in which territory meets thought and the experience of existence. His spaces refer to more than places: they can be understood as realms of memory, conditions of origin, or territories from which a consciousness begins to emerge. Geometry is one of his means, rather than the purpose of his painting.

Monoliths hold a distinctive place in this universe. Their presence offers a way of approaching what acquires substance within experience: a belief that takes hold, an identity that endures, a thought that persists, or an existence that resists full explanation. These relationships do not form a code of fixed correspondences. The monolith retains its power to suggest without becoming the illustration of an idea.

Incisions, distances and horizons belong to this same language. They may open associations with traces, separation, passage or resonance, without requiring every mark to translate into a meaning. The austerity of certain compositions does not imply a simple experience: what a painting concentrates can far exceed the number of elements it contains.

This language takes on different inflections across his series: the masks of FACIES; the movement of VORTEX; Mediterranean dream and memory in MARE SOMNIORUM; the inquiries into origin, emergence and passage developed in PRIMORDIUM, EMERSIO and LIMINA; and the relationships between experience, memory and thought in STRATA. INCARNATE introduces a perspective on the possibility of giving something pictorial existence, without becoming an explanation for the entirety of his practice.

Between lived and imagined experience, painting preserves a space of freedom. Its symbolic dimension offers no key with which to decode it: it allows something to be experienced without being exhausted by description.

Maurizio Valch works primarily in acrylic on canvas and also uses oil paint, which in some works is applied over an acrylic foundation to develop nuances, transparency and transitions of color. Using brushes and palette knives, he combines direct paint application, glazing, impasto, scraping and incisions. These methods vary from one work and series to another; they neither follow a prescribed sequence nor aim for a uniform finish.

The process involves both adding and removing material. Layering, covering, dragging or scraping paint allows what has already been made to change without necessarily erasing all its traces. Some interventions remain visible; others are partially concealed and contribute to the painting's depth. The surface thus brings together different moments in the work's making, rather than only its final image.

Incision has a particular place in this practice. It involves physically working into the paint layers rather than drawing a line on top of them. In relation to glazes and more densely worked areas, a minimal intervention can change the experience of the whole. Material force and subtlety are not opposing approaches: they can coexist within a single work.

Inquiry does not take place only before painting begins. It also happens in the act of working, in the relationship between what is intended and what actually emerges. A decision may open an unforeseen possibility, and an understanding of a work may come after it has been made. Thought is part of this process without requiring the painting to carry out an explanation formulated in advance.

Across his different series, technique remains bound to this freedom of inquiry. Texture is not an end in itself, nor is the construction of a form intended to demonstrate geometric perfection. Materials and actions allow something to come into being without needing to be fully defined before painting begins.

I am drawn to atmospheres that can alter our habitual perception of reality. Spaces in which the visible does not exhaust what we experience, in which matter acquires a presence beyond its appearance, and time seems to break free from its everyday continuity. I do not seek to depict supernatural worlds or manufacture mystery. I am interested in discovering the extraordinary in the very fact of existing.

Silence has an important place in my sensibility, but I do not understand it as absence. It can hold extraordinary intensity, an unresolved tension, an energy that needs no movement to make itself felt. I am drawn to deep contemplation, melancholy without sentimentality, strangeness, uncertainty, and that particular feeling of encountering something we recognize intimately yet cannot fully identify.

My universe, however, is not governed by darkness, solemnity or introspection. It also holds luminosity, desire, vitality, beauty, wonder and affection. A luminous atmosphere may contain a profound mystery; a monumental presence may convey fragility; an apparently motionless composition may harbor a transformation. Intensity does not require drama, just as depth does not require darkness.

The physical dimension is inseparable from this experience. Color, light, geometric relationships, distances, scale, material density, incisions and depth construct spatial realities of their own. I do not regard these elements as a vocabulary for translating emotions or philosophical concepts. Their relationships can produce experiences that no single interpretation can fully explain.

I am particularly interested in the possibility of presence without representation: an existence that need not offer a recognizable identity to establish a relationship with the person contemplating it. I find a deeply metaphysical dimension in this experience: painting can make us aware of the mystery of BEING without attempting to resolve it. The point is not to understand what a presence means, but to experience that it is there, with its own complexity, contradictions and what remains unknown.

There is also an emotional dimension that I consider inseparable from my relationship with art. A painting can bring us closer to an encounter that asks for neither possession, identification nor understanding. It can awaken an unexpected intimacy with something unknown to us. In this openness I find one of the most extraordinary possibilities of artistic experience: art as a doorway to love.

I do not seek a uniform emotional atmosphere. Each painting has its own nature and can awaken different, even contradictory, experiences. I want to preserve that singularity, to allow the work to establish its own relationships with the viewer, and to let what remains inexplicable retain its force despite our need to understand it.

Existence itself strikes me as more enigmatic than any explanation of what exists. Looking back at my painting, I recognize a metaphysical inquiry that began long before I could put it into words. It is a questioning of BEING: of what we are beyond our identities, our histories and the definitions through which we try to understand existence.

I am interested in the multiplicity of BEING: consciousness, memory, thought, desire, contradictions, transformations and those dimensions of existence we do not yet know how to name. Yet I do not understand this multiplicity as a collection of parts that can be separated, analyzed and represented individually. I do not seek to explain this multiplicity. I seek to give it pictorial existence.

My language takes shape through color, materiality, geometry, incisions, spatial relationships and depth. These elements, however, do not form a symbolic system intended to represent emotions, thoughts or psychological states. Painting is not a visual translation of a theory of BEING. It creates an autonomous reality: a manifestation that develops its own relationships, tensions, contradictions and possibilities of existence.

The metaphysical does not necessarily reside in what a painting represents, but in what its existence allows us to experience. A presence can manifest itself without assuming a recognizable identity. A pictorial reality can evoke an experience of time, memory, permanence or transformation without becoming an illustration of those concepts. Matter and the intangible need not appear as separate worlds: they can meet within a single artistic experience.

Something fundamental underlies this inquiry: we need not reduce the unknown to the known in order to paint it. Mystery is neither an aesthetic device nor a deliberate obscurity. It acknowledges that existence exceeds our ability to understand and define it. Painting allows us to approach this immensity without being obliged to resolve it.

Here I also find a profound relationship between art and love. Contemplation can be a way of approaching what exists without seeking to possess it, explain it or turn it into an extension of our own certainties. Creation opens a space of freedom in which the unknown can retain its nature, and an encounter with a work of art can change the way we experience existence.

Maurizio Valch's symbolic and metaphysical universe

My pictorial language unfolds through different inquiries that share a metaphysical sensibility while retaining distinct visual identities. Geometry, materiality, space, depth and color relationships take on different forms of existence in each series. Recurring elements do not constitute a universal symbolic code: their nature and expressive possibilities change within each inquiry.

VORTEX — Movement, energy and transformation

Circular configurations, concentric structures, radial shifts and directional tensions form the essential vocabulary of VORTEX. Relationships between forms generate expansion, contraction and rotation, creating spaces in which stability seems constantly threatened by the forces acting upon it.

Geometry takes on a dynamic dimension. Centers can become points of convergence or dispersal, while lines and planes establish relationships of balance, opposition and displacement. Pictorial space ceases to appear as a static construction and becomes a reality traversed by simultaneous movements.

The inquiry approaches the continual transformation of existence metaphorically, without turning movement into a literal representation of energy or consciousness.

FACIES — Identity, multiplicity and recognition

FACIES investigates the possibilities of fragmented representation through geometric configurations, displaced planes, divisions and relationships between surfaces that may suggest the presence of a face without relying exclusively on figurative likeness.

Fragmentation is not intended to represent a destroyed identity, but to open different possibilities of recognition. Forms can relate to one another, contradict one another or coexist without necessarily achieving conventional visual unity. Perception moves between what seems familiar and a pictorial construction that retains its independence.

The face becomes more than a recognizable surface: it becomes a territory of spatial relationships, simultaneous presences and perspectives. This gives rise to a questioning of identity, its multiplicity, and the limits of what we believe we know when we recognize an appearance.

MARE SOMNIORUM — Imaginary territories and memory

Expansive horizons, architectural spaces, monoliths, ascending stairways, paths, thresholds, isolated blocks and geometric structures form a significant part of the world of MARE SOMNIORUM. These are settings in which the perception of territory gradually moves away from geographical references to acquire an imagined reality of its own.

These spatial constructions establish relationships between near and far, depth and surface, permanence and transformation. Horizons may suggest expanses that cannot be measured; paths and stairways introduce directions that do not necessarily lead to recognizable destinations. Architectural elements seem to belong to places whose history is unknown to us.

Memories of the Mediterranean, its landscapes and architecture, and the experience of places encountered inform this inquiry without turning it into a geographical reconstruction. Territory becomes more than a place: it becomes a possibility of pictorial existence.

PRIMORDIUM — Matter and primordial territory

Within the exploration of territory associated with MARE SOMNIORUM, PRIMORDIUM introduces a sensibility attuned to origins, the elemental presence of matter, and the construction of spaces preceding any precise geographical identification.

Color fields, expansive surfaces, horizons, monolithic structures and relationships between large geometric masses come to the fore. Forms may appear isolated, partially embedded in the territory, or suspended within a space whose scale remains indeterminate.

Reducing the number of recognizable elements intensifies the relationships between materiality, color and depth. The primordial does not necessarily represent a remote past: it proposes the possibility of contemplating a reality before our need to recognize it turns it into a familiar landscape.

PRIMORDIUM is presented here as an exploration associated with MARE SOMNIORUM, without automatically designating it as an independent series.

EMERSIO — Emergence, presence and spatial transformation

EMERSIO develops a language of geometric structures, architectural volumes, monoliths, overlapping planes and spatial divisions that explores the relationship between what remains part of a surface and what acquires autonomy from it.

Boundaries, interruptions, shifts in depth and relationships between masses of color create visual situations in which a form may seem to emerge, separate itself or acquire presence within pictorial space. The tension between surface and volume is particularly important.

Emergence need not be understood as birth or revelation. It may be a change in spatial relationships, a transformation of perception, or a new condition in which forms exist.

Presence need not represent anything recognizable: it can manifest itself through the very reality that painting creates.

STRATA — Sedimentation, materiality and time

STRATA investigates relationships between strata, color fields, fragmented surfaces, geometric blocks, horizons, territorial divisions and incisions made directly into the paint itself.

Layering and glazing build different levels of depth, while cuts and other material interventions interrupt the continuity of surfaces. A composition may suggest shifts, pressure, fractures or sedimented structures without necessarily becoming a geological representation.

Color has a spatial and material role. Contrasts can separate territories, bring surfaces closer together, or create tensions between apparently motionless volumes. Incisions introduce a physical dimension independent of symbolic interpretation: they are actual events on the surface of the painting.

Memory and time emerge as possible readings of these material relationships. STRATA does not necessarily depict traces of the past; it constructs a pictorial reality in which layering, permanence and transformation can coexist.

INCARNATE — The multiplicity of BEING and pictorial existence

INCARNATE allows me to recognize, in retrospect, an inquiry into the manifestation of BEING that was already present in my artistic practice. Its language develops through geometric structures, architectural relationships, planes, volumes, spatial divisions, color contrasts and constructions of depth.

A composition may establish complex relationships between unity and fragmentation, proximity and distance, balance and contradiction. Structures acquire an autonomous presence without needing to reproduce a human figure, an organism or a recognizable identity.

The inquiry approaches the multiplicity of existence: consciousness, memory, thought, desires, contradictions and dimensions that remain beyond our ability to define them. These dimensions, however, have no predetermined formal equivalents. No volume necessarily represents the ego, no incision a wound, and no spatial division a psychological conflict.

I do not seek to explain this multiplicity. I seek to give it pictorial existence.

Painting can conceive a presence without describing its appearance or revealing a supposed inner truth. Its reality does not depend on identifying what it represents, but on the relationships, intensities and possibilities of existence it acquires within pictorial space.

INCARNATA does not establish a new method of creation. It offers a perspective from which I can contemplate and investigate something my painting had been developing long before I found these words.

An overview — Maurizio Valch's pictorial universe

My pictorial universe unfolds through an abstract, geometric and architectural language in which materiality, space and color acquire a deeply metaphysical dimension. Each series constitutes a particular inquiry, while all participate in a broader questioning of existence, time, memory, transformation and the nature of BEING.

Monoliths, horizons, fragmented structures, color fields, strata, incisions, volumes, thresholds, stairways and spatial constructions belong to a vocabulary that changes throughout my practice. In some inquiries, movement and forces predominate; in others, identity and multiplicity, imaginary territories, the sedimentation of matter, or the manifestation of abstract presences.

Depth, three-dimensionality, layering and relationships between surfaces make it possible to construct realities that need not correspond to familiar physical spaces. Material itself plays an active part in that construction: it can accumulate, fragment, reveal earlier layers, or acquire new relationships through incisions and shifts.

My symbols do not constitute a system of established meanings. Their significance lies not only in what they evoke, but in the existence they acquire within each painting. A horizon can cease to be a landscape; a monolith can become a presence whose nature is unknown to us; a fragmented structure can retain a unity that does not depend on its appearance.

Looking back over my practice, I recognize an inquiry into the multiplicity of BEING that transcends the differences between my series. Painting can approach an existence without describing its attributes, representing its psychology or explaining its nature.

I do not seek to explain this multiplicity. I seek to give it pictorial existence.

This perspective is not a program that determines what I create, but a way of understanding what my painting has been exploring for some time. Each work retains its autonomy, its contradictions and its mystery.

We need not reduce the unknown to the known in order to paint it.

In this freedom, I find the possibility for painting to move beyond representation and become an experience of existence in its own right.