Vertical abstract painting by Maurizio Valch titled DISPERSA, featuring a textured crimson red background, fine horizontal white incised lines, and small light-colored blocks in relief suspended. — Maurizio Valch, DISPERSA. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm. From the STRATA series.

Detail of the edge of the work, where the crimson and the incisions dissolve the traditional frame.

A minimalist living room with concrete walls where the large vertical painting DISPERSA hangs, illuminated by reflected colors from a large stained-glass window. — DISPERSA installed in a contemporary space under the chromatic play of filtered light.

A close-up view of a canvas edge featuring deep red acrylic and oil paint, showing horizontal white incised lines and small raised pinkish blocks. — Side detail of the physical incisions and dense crimson depth on the edge of DISPERSA.

The vertical abstract painting DISPERSA leaning directly on a terracotta tiled floor in a rustic hallway with stone walls and wooden beams lit by lateral sunlight. — Presentation of the artwork DISPERSA leaning in a rustic space, showing the interaction of its crimson texture with natural materials.

Close-up of the edge of a textured canvas painted with deep crimson red oil paint and physical white horizontal incised lines. — Side detail of DISPERSA, showing the painted edges, the density of the chromatic strata, and the physical incision made on the canvas.

Double-height ceiling interior with wooden beams and polished concrete floor, showing the crimson abstract painting Dispersa hanging high on a sunlit rustic wall. — DISPERSA exhibited in a double-height room; the tension of the incised lines and the sobriety of the pink blocks dialogue with the scale of the concrete.

Abstract artwork Dispersa, with its dense red surface and horizontal incisions, resting directly on the cement floor of a brutalist gallery. — DISPERSA resting directly on the concrete floor, stripped of frame or support, assuming its material presence in space.

A macro close-up of the surface of the abstract painting DISPERSA with thick, blackened crimson oil paint crossed by thin white incised lines. — Detail of the dense texture and subtractive incisions on the surface of DISPERSA.

Vertical abstract painting titled DISPERSA hanging on an interior rustic stone wall in a cozy living room. — Maurizio Valch's DISPERSA installed on a natural stone wall in a contemporary rustic living room.

Spacious designer room with vaulted ceilings and a large stained-glass window, featuring the abstract crimson painting Dispersa hanging on the side wall above velvet sofas. — DISPERSA in a room with high ceilings and filtered light, where the chromatic density of the painting establishes an immutable contrast against the dynamism of the space.

Published work / STRATA

DISPERSA

Matter and memory in tension on the canvas

Medium: Pintura
Size: 31.5 × 47.2 in / 80 × 120 cm
Series: STRATA
Orientation: Vertical
Context studies: 12

Conceptual Note

DISPERSA condenses one of the most persistent inquiries in Maurizio Valch's career: the transformation of the canvas into a living territory that records the passage of time and physical action. Integrated into his exploration of matter and memory, this work confronts the viewer with a surface that ceases to be a passive support to become a skin subjected to tensions. By dispersing minimal elements over a dense chromatic field, Valch proposes a dialogue where the individual and the collective, permanence and transit, are physically inscribed in the painting, showing that every consolidated territory always harbors the possibility of its own fracture.

The work raises a fundamental question about how we inhabit and order space in the face of the inevitable dispersion of experience. Through the tension between the incised lines that furrow the canvas and the small suspended blocks, it suggests the existence of an unfinished cartography, a navigational map that does not seek to guide towards a safe destination, but rather to register accidents, pauses, and detours. This layout questions the rigidity of inherited structures—whether conceptual, social, or personal—and proposes that true awareness does not arise from absolute stability, but from accepting the fragility of occupying a provisional place exposed to the forces of the environment.

In this piece, Valch’s critical affinity with Antoni Tàpies is evident in the treatment of the surface as a wall or skin that accumulates scrapes and incisions, moving away from purely flat painting. However, unlike the informalist roughness of Tàpies, Valch introduces a geometric restraint and a linear tension that dialogues with the organized fields of Barnett Newman. While Newman uses his lines to divide absolute fields, Valch's incisions operate subtractively, excavating into the dense matter to reveal the support and sustain small structures that oscillate between architectural block and graphic sign.

Visually, DISPERSA is organized on a dense and textured crimson field, worked through layers of acrylic and oil that reveal dark areas of accumulation and sedimentation. Several horizontal and slightly diagonal incisions cross the surface; these white lines are not added on top of the paint, but result from a physical scraping that penetrates the strata of pigment. Hanging from these incised marks are small quadrangular blocks with relief texture, distributed irregularly across the plane. This asymmetrical composition deliberately avoids a symmetrical order, generating a rhythm where the voids and distances between forms acquire the same material weight as the visible presences.

By scraping the density of this crimson, I do not seek to add a drawing on top of the canvas, but to remove matter so that light interacts with the relief of the surface. When I place the canvas leaning directly against the floor or the bricks, outside the controlled order of the easel, I assume that the work must defend itself and accept the accidents of its own weight. Each suspended block and each incision represents for me an attempt to understand the resistance of what we inherit and the need to open cracks in that solidity. In the end, returning to the empty studio does not leave me with a sense of loss, but with a cleared space where I can formulate the next question.