Contemporary and Baroque style, faith and disillusion, discomfort and lightness, are the themes in Claudio Onorato’s research which are hosted in the 17th century Baptistery of Velate at the foot of Sacro Monte, Varese. Huge hand cut paper sheets invite visitors to walk slowly towards the place where the altar once stood. These works do not mean to be comforting as they tell us about the tragedy of war, biblical exoduses and migration flows, the eternal predicament of life and death, the schemes in the underground palaces of politics, the obscure death of a middleman, the desire of peace which we all aspire to.

By changing the observer’s point of view, our certainties seem to succumb. The simmering of shape, the dematerialization of matter, the unveiling of the primordial forces of life, the obsessive repetition of an image until claustrophobia, above and beneath, right and left, earth and sea lose definition and meaning, as a great tide which submerges us slowly. Only a frail border line, like a furrow in our memory, is left to map out space and time.