Matteo Ciffo - Orme - Esso

- Matteo Ciffo's contemporary artwork (Italy - 1987). Title Orme - Esso
- Year 2025. Edition no. 1/40 - Signed and authenticated by the artist, with authenticity certificate
- Material: Cold fusion of marble and stone powders
- Excellent condition

ORME COLLECTION

The Orme collection was born as a natural evolution of my artistic path, always oriented toward a reflection on matter, on sign, and on the relationship between time and memory. These works are not simply paintings, but active surfaces, suspended places where time does not flow linearly: it is anticipated, compressed, transformed.

The symbols that surface in the Orme works come from my childhood. They are signs that accompanied me even before being fully understood: archetypal shapes, letters, emblems, logos, essential memories that belong to a personal memory but also collective. As in previous works, these symbols are never reproduced faithfully or nostalgically. They are deconstructed, rebuilt, and deprived of their original function, until they take on a new identity.

Erosion is a central element of the process, but not as a consequence of time passing. In these works time is anticipated. The surfaces are born already eroded, as if the future had already acted on them. They are not archaeological finds brought to light, but objects placed out of time, made immune to its flow because they have already been traversed by memory.

The material follows this logic as well. The works are made from marble powder offcuts, residues of previous processes that are re-mixed and brought back to life. It is a gesture that eliminates the idea of an end and introduces a continuous cycle, potentially infinite, in which nothing is consumed definitively but only transformed. The material does not represent stone: it is stone that is reborn.

In Orme the creative act does not add, but subtracts. The erosions are not carried out afterward, as a sign of decay, but beforehand, as a conscious choice. Anticipating time means depriving the works of the possibility of aging, stabilizing them in a definitive condition.

These works do not tell a linear story, but retain a presence. They are fragments of memory that no longer belong to the past, but to a suspended dimension, in which the symbol ceases to be sign and becomes matter, and matter becomes a trace: a trace of something that has been, but continues to exist in the present.




Each painting produced in 40 copies, is nonetheless unique: color variations, imperfections and marks make each Orma unrepeatable.




MATTEO CIFFO

Born in Biella in 1987, since 2007 I have developed research focused on matter, its transformation and the memory that it preserves. My work arises from a direct relationship with noble and complex materials such as marble and stone powders, natural pigments, Armenian earths, oxides and metals. I do not consider them mere expressive tools, but living presences, bearers of time, history and the possibility of rebirth.

Through a process I consider more ritual than sculptural: a rebirth of stone guided by my hand. The practice stems from observation and the desire to give life back to what has been broken, abandoned, or forgotten. Fragments and scraps, often from the work of other sculptors, become the original material for my works.
These are materials that already carry a story within them. I break them down and recombine them, generating forms that no longer belong to their previous state, but to a new condition. Each work emerges from a fragile balance between loss and rebirth, between memory and possibility, making visible the moment in which matter ceases to be what it was and becomes something else.

The path takes the form of a transformation that surpasses traditional sculpture, approaching an almost alchemical dimension. I use materials that have already had an existence, break them down and recombine them to generate new forms and identities. Each creation arises from a tension between destruction and regeneration, between loss and memory, making visible a continuous state of change.

The research confronts materials that embody a deep contradiction: seemingly eternal and indestructible, yet at the same time sensitive and vulnerable. What seems immutable reveals an unstable nature, capable of reacting, oxidizing, and transforming over time. This condition makes matter an active part of the work, involved in a constant dialogue with time and the environment.

Perfection gives way to fragility, and eternity manifests as a living, human experience. Matter is not subordinated, but becomes a co-author, preserving on the surface traces of gesture, process, and its own evolution.

autodidact, I have built my path through experimentation, observation, and listening. The approach is not aimed at control, but at accompanying the material in its transformation. The resulting forms reflect the functioning of memory: structures in which fragments, traces, and absences coexist and regenerate.

This practice explores matter as a living archive. The sculptures emerge as suspended presences between ruin and rebirth, between permanence and transformation, restoring to matter a deeply contemporary and human dimension.