Matteo Ciffo - Orme - Esso

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

ORME COLLECTION

The Orme collection emerges as a natural evolution of my artistic path, always oriented toward reflection on matter, on the sign, and on the relationship between time and memory. These works are not merely paintings, but active surfaces, suspended spaces 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 they were fully understood: archetypal shapes, letters, emblems, logos, essential memories that belong to a personal but also collective memory. As in previous works, these symbols are never reproduced faithfully or nostalgically. They are decomposed, rebuilt, and deprived of their original function, until they acquire 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. These are not archaeological finds brought to light, but objects placed outside of time, made immune to its passage because already traversed by memory.

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

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

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



Every painting produced in 40 copies remains unique: color variations, imperfections, and marks make each Orma unrepeatable.



MATTEO CIFFO

Born in Biella in 1987, since 2007 I have developed research centered on matter, its transformation, and the memory 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 possibilities of rebirth.

Through a process I consider more ritual than sculptural: a rebirth of stone guided by my hand. The practice originates from observation and the desire to give life back to what has been crushed, abandoned, or forgotten. Fragments and scraps, often from other sculptors’ work, become the original matter for my pieces.

These are materials that already carry a history in themselves. I dissect and reassemble 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 when matter stops being 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 lived, break them down, and recompose 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 simultaneously 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 yields to fragility, and eternity manifests as a living, human experience. Matter is not subordinate, but becomes co-author, preserving on the surface traces of gesture, process, and its own evolution.

Autodidite, I built my path through experimentation, observation, and listening. The approach is not about control, but about accompanying the material in its transformation. The resulting forms reflect how memory functions: 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 profoundly contemporary and human dimension.