{"title":"Il Bivio II - Sicily in Confluence","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMay 19-20 2024\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThis exhibition anchors itself in the architectural echoes and fluid landscapes of Sicily. Il Bivio II is more than a physical or geographic metaphor: it is also a spiritual and cultural crossroads, where the built and the natural, the past and the present, the intimate and the universal intersect. Through painting, photography, and sculpture, the show unfolds as a dialogue between the artists and their environments — revealing how spaces shape us, and how we, in turn, transform them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe works evoke the layered soul of Sicily, its sun-scorched textures and silent, resilient architecture, inviting viewers to reflect on their own landscapes — both external and internal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIL BIVIO II – Sicily in Confluence presents a selection of Sicilian artists, each uniquely and personally exploring themes of landscape, architecture, and human interaction. Each artist has been chosen for their ability to translate these themes into visual expressions that provoke deep reflection on our relationship with both the natural and built environment.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"catania-albero","title":"Catania, albero","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlbero, Catania is a quietly haunting image from Pietro Motisi’s series Sicilia Fantasma, which explores the tension between landscape and memory across Sicily’s layered terrain. Captured with a Mamiya 7 medium format camera on Kodak Portra 400 film, the photograph features a lone, wind-bent tree standing improbably at the edge of the sea—part rooted, part adrift.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn the distance, a ferry cuts across the horizon and a fluorescent life vest floats in shallow waves, introducing industrial and human traces into an otherwise near-mythical scene. The work is filled with ghostly contrasts: permanence and transience, the natural and the artificial, presence and abandonment.\u003cbr\u003e\nMotisi’s palette is soft yet precise, and his composition intentionally spare, inviting viewers to contemplate what remains—physically and metaphorically—when places lose their function but not their aura. Albero, Catania is not just a photograph of a tree by the shore; it is a portrait of Sicily’s spectral dualities.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864459084,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/50_a.jpg?v=1769943955"},{"product_id":"marcello","title":"Marcello","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Marcello, Pietro Motisi captures a moment of quiet absurdity and poetic tension within a landscape of abandonment. A barefoot figure—half-playful, half-concentrated—balances atop a low stone wall, framed by the skeletal architecture of an unfinished or deserted housing complex. The scene feels both intimate and symbolic, suggesting themes of stasis, exploration, and the fragile balance between human presence and architectural decay.\u003cbr\u003e\nShot with a large format camera on Kodak Portra film, the photograph carries a soft palette and immersive detail. The man’s colorful swimwear and spontaneous pose contrast with the mute geometry of the concrete shells behind him, injecting a subtle humor into an otherwise charged space.\u003cbr\u003e\nMarcello is less about portraiture and more about place, gesture, and the strange choreography of bodies within broken landscapes. It asks: What do we do in ruins—not metaphorical ones, but real, sun-bleached structures left behind?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864557388,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/51_a.jpg?v=1770012835"},{"product_id":"monastery","title":"Monastery","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Monastero, Pietro Motisi captures the architectural tension between ruin and renewal with surgical precision. A crumbling monastic wall, marked by time and weather, stands in silent dialogue with a newly constructed steel structure—transparent, modular, and rational. Motisi frames this juxtaposition without drama, allowing the materials themselves to tell a story of transformation, preservation, and friction.\u003cbr\u003e\nShot on large format film, the image emphasizes texture and light, rendering every crack in the plaster and grid of metal mesh with meditative clarity. This is not a nostalgic image, but a quietly critical one. Monastero poses questions: How do we build over memory? What remains sacred in an era of reconstruction?\u003cbr\u003e\nPart of the CEMENTO series, this work is a reflection on Sicily’s layered identity—caught between the archaeological and the contemporary, the sacred and the bureaucratic, the enduring and the improvised.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864688460,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/52_a.jpg?v=1769944864"},{"product_id":"poggioreale-frame","title":"Poggioreale, Frame","description":"\u003cp\u003ePoggioreale, Frame is a quiet yet profound image. Shot with a medium format Mamiya 7 camera on Kodak Portra 400 film, the work depicts an empty metal frame set against the vast Sicilian countryside—a surreal visual gesture in a town marked by trauma and time.\u003cbr\u003e\nPoggioreale, devastated by an earthquake in 1968, still bears the traces of abandonment and reconstruction. The skeletal frame, mounted on concrete blocks, seems to offer a curated view of the rolling hills and distant towns—yet its emptiness speaks louder than any inscription might have. It’s a meditation on how we attempt to frame memory, contain loss, and aestheticize ruin.\u003cbr\u003e\nMotisi’s use of natural light and analog precision invites the viewer into a suspended moment where landscape, history, and architecture converge. Poggioreale, Frame is not only an image of place, but a reflection on what remains visible—and what quietly disappears.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864721228,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/53_a.jpg?v=1769944937"},{"product_id":"sant-orsola-monumental-cemetary","title":"Sant’Orsola Monumental Cemetary","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Cimitero, Pietro Motisi presents a stark visual intersection of the sacred and the secular, capturing a cemetery in Palermo framed against the backdrop of mid-century apartment blocks. The composition is meticulously balanced: rows of tombstones and mausoleums crowd the foreground, their sculpted angels and marble crosses bearing witness to loss, memory, and ritual. Above and behind them rise faceless concrete towers—symbols of modern urban density, anonymity, and routine life.\u003cbr\u003e\nShot with a large format camera, the image offers remarkable clarity and tonal softness, allowing every detail—from flower arrangements to balcony laundry—to resonate with quiet intensity. Motisi does not force contrast; instead, he allows these layers of history and architecture to coexist, questioning what permanence means in a rapidly evolving environment.\u003cbr\u003e\nCimitero is part of Motisi’s CEMENTO series, which explores the unresolved and often poetic relationship between lived experience, constructed space, and the traces we leave behind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864786764,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/54_a.jpg?v=1769945026"},{"product_id":"the-temples-of-agrigento","title":"The Temples of Agrigento","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn Templi, Agrigento, Pietro Motisi captures a quietly charged juxtaposition between everyday Sicilian life and the grandeur of ancient architecture. Shot with a large format camera on Kodak Portra 160 film, the image presents the famed Temple of Concordia in the background—serene, distant, timeless—while the foreground is occupied by domestic objects, patchwork fences, and improvised structures.\u003cbr\u003e\nMotisi's framing is meticulous yet understated. The composition resists spectacle, instead highlighting how the ancient past lives not in isolation, but alongside the rhythms of the present. A leaning utility pole cuts across the sky like a modern column; laundry and cardboard replace marble and myth. The photograph is a subtle meditation on coexistence—between permanence and impermanence, monument and margin.\u003cbr\u003e\nPart of the CEMENTO series, this limited edition print redefines the landscape of heritage through a lens both intimate and unflinching.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pietro Motisi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612864819532,"sku":null,"price":1150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/55_a.jpg?v=1769945092"},{"product_id":"like-stones-in-the-landscape","title":"Like Stones in the Landscape","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo nude figures stand side by side, their finely sculpted bodies abruptly crowned by unhewn masses of alabaster. The raw, geological forms in place of heads speak to themes of identity, anonymity, and human presence within the natural landscape. The juxtaposition of anatomical precision and organic chaos invites reflection on the tension between intellect and instinct, civilization and nature.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Giuseppe Agnello","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56612865245516,"sku":null,"price":10000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/files\/62_a.jpg?v=1769946539"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1009\/6790\/7660\/collections\/Simone_Geraci_portrait_40317db5-c036-4c3b-9d4e-2cf40a2599f3.webp?v=1770015999","url":"https:\/\/thenomadartcollective.com\/collections\/il-bivio-ii-sicily-in-confluence.oembed","provider":"Nomad Art Collective","version":"1.0","type":"link"}