Maurizio Valch Abstract Painting / Territory and Thought
LUX REMOTA, a horizontal abstract painting with a large nocturnal blue field, a red block on the left, a white disc, pink and green bands, and two red staircases.
Maurizio Valch, LUX REMOTA, 120 × 80 × 3 cm. Abstract composition of stratified planes, a red block, white light and staircases across the horizon.
Side-view mockup of LUX REMOTA hung on a white gallery wall; the white circle against blue and the red block on the left stand out.
The circular light remains isolated in the blue field: a visible brightness that does not lessen the distance.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA in a white-wall gallery, viewed from the right; the isolated red block and white circle contrast against the blue field.
The red block retains its lateral weight without becoming the centre or destination of the territory.
Oblique detail of a corner of LUX REMOTA showing the canvas edge, blue, red, ochre, pink and grey bands, and part of a red staircase.
Mockup detail: colour continues around the edge, while the staircase is interrupted by the change of plane.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA resting at an angle against a concrete wall in an interior with large windows; the canvas edge is visible and rests on grey tiled flooring.
A floor-level mockup showing the 3 cm canvas edge and the scale of LUX REMOTA in the space.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA hung in a high-ceilinged gallery, seen from floor level; the large blue field dominates the composition above colour bands and red staircases.
The great blue expanse maintains its continuity over the bands of ground and makes the painting’s smaller scales seem fragile.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA in a gallery room viewed from above, beside other artworks; the painting features dominant blue, a red block, circular light and lower colour bands.
Elevated gallery mockup: transitions between pink, grey, green and orange reveal a territory made of edges in contact.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA hung in a spacious gallery with a sculpture in the background; the painting is seen from a low perspective and shows two red staircases, a red block and a white circle.
At gallery scale, the minimal staircases make the painted territory seem larger than the canvas.
Mockup of LUX REMOTA resting in a studio space with parquet flooring; pink, grey, green, ochre and orange bands appear below the blue field.
The lower bands retain an unstable horizontality: boundaries, veils and dragged marks prevent the territory from becoming a diagram.

Published work / MARE SOMNIORUM

LUX REMOTA

Stratified horizon, distant light and staircases in an abstract territory

Size
47.2 × 31.5 in / 120 × 80 cm
Series
MARE SOMNIORUM Painting series MARE SOMNIORUM 2024–Present · 3 works MARE SOMNIORUM transforms Maurizio Valch’s Mediterranean experience into an open pictorial territory, where horizon, silence, and isolated structures retain the intensity of a place without describing it literally. His paintings sustain a distance between what has been lived and what has been imagined, between movement and stillness. View series
Context studies
9

Conceptual Note

Light does not occupy the centre of LUX REMOTA: it remains at a distance, small and white, suspended in a field of nocturnal blue density. Before it, a compact, eroded red construction interrupts the horizon line; below, bands of pale pink, green, grey and orange extend outward. The scene retains something of landscape, yet resists becoming an identifiable place. Within MARE SOMNIORUM, Maurizio Valch places the gaze in a territory of waiting, where the forms seem to have arrived before—or after—the person observing them.

Two slender staircases introduce an unresolved direction. One rises from the lower edge and stops short of reaching the large pale plane; the other, farther away, rests on a green band and disappears towards the horizon. They neither guarantee access nor describe a story. They function as precarious measures of distance: making visible the separation between the painting’s strata while also posing a simple, persistent question about what it means to move forward when no clear arrival is offered.

In a precise sense, the territorial organisation recalls the abstractions of Richard Diebenkorn: planes of colour that still retain a memory of expanse, incline and horizon. Valch, however, reduces the continuity of landscape until it becomes more isolated and nocturnal. The red mass does not act as descriptive architecture; it carries weight as an autonomous presence within an open space. Its scraped surface, punctuated by small voids, introduces a material temporality that prevents the geometry from becoming fully stable.

The deep blue is not a neutral background: it supports the almost cutting whiteness of the celestial body and brings the red to a frontal intensity. Beneath that dark band, the horizontal fields seem applied, dragged and slightly wounded at their edges; the luminous pink opens out into an expanse that never quite becomes either ground or water. Red contours, turquoise marks and irregular material retain the trace of painterly action. Thus, the calm of LUX REMOTA is not stillness: it is made of intervals, cuts and distances that keep the territory awake.