SACRO PANE
Mario Ciaramella
a cura di Carla Travierso
“Man is what he makes of what he has.”
(André Malraux)
In Mario Ciaramella’s work, the figure does not emerge from an image but directly from matter. His sculptures seem to surface from a time that does not coincide with chronology, but with what is built through repeated gestures, through labor, through persistence.
It is within this dimension that the series of the twelve apostles is situated, understood not as iconographic subjects but as figures shaped by a shared existential condition. In them, one recognizes a profound proximity to the rural world, not a superficial analogical reference but a true overlap of meaning. Like farmers, the apostles are figures of perseverance, of obstinacy, of a fidelity measured over time and through labor rather than through adherence to an abstract principle.
This condition recalls what was once defined as heroic agriculture, a harsh and exposed practice made of continuity and contradictions, in which labor guarantees nothing but compels one to endure. A labor that entails loss, error, and return. In this sense, the resemblance between apostles and farmers is not symbolic but existential.
This analogy alters the meaning of the figures. The apostle loses symbolic distance and moves closer to an ordinary, concrete dimension. He is no longer the bearer of a fulfilled truth, but an exposed figure, moving through error and doubt, fall and return. The sacred does not present itself as separate transcendence but passes through labor, through the body, through time; it resides in what is repeated even when it produces no visible result.
It is matter that holds all this together. Patinated terracotta, with its opaque and compact quality, retains an almost geological memory, restoring to the figures a presence that is both ancient and contemporary. It is not a reference to the past but a form of embodied experience, as if these works carried within them something already lived. The surface of the sculptures bears the marks of this passage, recording, absorbing, and returning it.
Bread enters the same order, not as a simple reference to Christian tradition but as the outcome of a process, the result of a transformation involving labor, waiting, and care. Bread is what holds together the individual gesture and the community, what makes visible a form of community grounded in necessity before choice. It is something that is made, divided, and shared. And precisely for this reason, it endures.
The figure of the seed further condenses this tension. It does not present itself as a finished form but as held potential, as latent energy. Within it is inscribed the time of harvest but also that of uncertainty, loss, and invisible transformation. The seed does not guarantee or promise; it exposes one to a relationship with time that demands continuity, dedication, and the ability to endure waiting without guarantees.
Ciaramella’s work is neither nostalgic nor symbolic in a reductive sense. The figures he brings forth do not belong to a past to be recovered but to a condition that continues to question the present. At a time when traditional forms of labor and communal life tend to dissolve, these sculptures bring back to the center a quality of existence made of resistance, relationship, and permanence.
Sacro Pane thus opens an essential question. What remains when bonds, shared gestures, and the elementary forms of living together begin to fade? It does not offer an answer but suggests a possibility: that something may continue to exist precisely where one persists, where one returns.
SACRO PANE
Mario Ciaramella
a cura di Carla Travierso
“Man is what he makes of what he has.”
(André Malraux)
In Mario Ciaramella’s work, the figure does not emerge from an image but directly from matter. His sculptures seem to surface from a time that does not coincide with chronology, but with what is built through repeated gestures, through labor, through persistence.
It is within this dimension that the series of the twelve apostles is situated, understood not as iconographic subjects but as figures shaped by a shared existential condition. In them, one recognizes a profound proximity to the rural world, not a superficial analogical reference but a true overlap of meaning. Like farmers, the apostles are figures of perseverance, of obstinacy, of a fidelity measured over time and through labor rather than through adherence to an abstract principle.
This condition recalls what was once defined as heroic agriculture, a harsh and exposed practice made of continuity and contradictions, in which labor guarantees nothing but compels one to endure. A labor that entails loss, error, and return. In this sense, the resemblance between apostles and farmers is not symbolic but existential.
This analogy alters the meaning of the figures. The apostle loses symbolic distance and moves closer to an ordinary, concrete dimension. He is no longer the bearer of a fulfilled truth, but an exposed figure, moving through error and doubt, fall and return. The sacred does not present itself as separate transcendence but passes through labor, through the body, through time; it resides in what is repeated even when it produces no visible result.
It is matter that holds all this together. Patinated terracotta, with its opaque and compact quality, retains an almost geological memory, restoring to the figures a presence that is both ancient and contemporary. It is not a reference to the past but a form of embodied experience, as if these works carried within them something already lived. The surface of the sculptures bears the marks of this passage, recording, absorbing, and returning it.
Bread enters the same order, not as a simple reference to Christian tradition but as the outcome of a process, the result of a transformation involving labor, waiting, and care. Bread is what holds together the individual gesture and the community, what makes visible a form of community grounded in necessity before choice. It is something that is made, divided, and shared. And precisely for this reason, it endures.
The figure of the seed further condenses this tension. It does not present itself as a finished form but as held potential, as latent energy. Within it is inscribed the time of harvest but also that of uncertainty, loss, and invisible transformation. The seed does not guarantee or promise; it exposes one to a relationship with time that demands continuity, dedication, and the ability to endure waiting without guarantees.
Ciaramella’s work is neither nostalgic nor symbolic in a reductive sense. The figures he brings forth do not belong to a past to be recovered but to a condition that continues to question the present. At a time when traditional forms of labor and communal life tend to dissolve, these sculptures bring back to the center a quality of existence made of resistance, relationship, and permanence.
Sacro Pane thus opens an essential question. What remains when bonds, shared gestures, and the elementary forms of living together begin to fade? It does not offer an answer but suggests a possibility: that something may continue to exist precisely where one persists, where one returns.