Claudio Valerio (Popoli 1991) trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in L'Aquila and Bologna. His artistic research pays particular attention to painting, seen as the possibility of capturing the nascent image, the one that can emerge from the amorphous condition of substances. The artist seeks to break down the distinction between physicality and appearance in order to construct real imagery. "To paint in an informally minimal way is to relate to the degree zero of painting, which is to spring meaning from nothingness. Reality is no longer sufficient because it is impossible to look at itself, it does not admit of reflection. The ghost of painting roams contemporary art as an ever-present threat, as an absent form that is ready to manifest and disappear like the images in the evil cauldron of the witches in Macbeth. Black is a non-color that absorbs the energy around it, at the bottom of which there may be Nothingness or the Absolute depending on the moods or the paradigm of pursuit."