Nessun boato

"Nessun Boato", Francesco Pacelli’s solo exhibition at Limbo, transforms the gallery spaces into a hovered, hushed environment—the contemporary equivalent of the primordial void referenced by the title itself, No Rumble: the absence of sound in the cosmic vacuum. The exhibition is conceived by delving into a foundational image, the seventeenth-century engraving "Chaos" by Abraham Van Diepenbeeck. Conceptually distant from the modern notion of disorder, and born of a time when science and spirituality were deeply entangled, this work instead depicts chaos as a source phenomenon. A vortex—dark yet matricial—where clouds, lightning, and animal figures begin to align into a primordial order. Echoing these constitutive elements, the artworks unfold within a space the artist has reconfigured as a tabula rasa, a necessary ground for investigating origins, finitude, and the mechanisms by which the human mind constructs meaning and reality from the undifferentiated. This potential space opens with "Inesorabile (a few billion years isn’t actually that much)", a series of four oil drawings on board through which Pacelli evokes the inescapable. He invites us to question the absolute cyclicality of the Sun and the finitude it inscribes within mortal life. Although unimaginably long when compared to human time, the existence of this mother star is temporally defined, as is the entire system it generates and upon which it depends. The painted light reveals an image we will never see with the naked eye, and with it delivers the weight of a question that human temporality allows us to dismiss: whether to accept the transience of our existence or to explore the limits of our intelligence to interrogate that finitude as an act of biological and existential resistance. A symbolic entity that simultaneously contains both beginning and end, the Sun projects us into a remote future to give form to an event that does not yet exist, demonstrating how our consciousness is always an act of projection and interpretation of reality. As we allow ourselves to be dazzled by this rhetorical urgency, beside us an orderly row of flies glides along a golden rail. "Tra la fine e l’inizio il nulla stelliforme" is a sculptural group composed of two elements, one of which runs along the walls of the first exhibition room. The bronze sculpture draws inspiration from a recurring subject in ancient Egyptian protective amulets, where the insect was attributed qualities of resilience and tenacity, making it an ideal symbol of protection against evil forces. These salvific characteristics are multiplied into a cosmic sequence, in which the flies lose their entomological identity and are sublimated into a small constellation. The fly, a symbol of biological persistence, becomes a star, a symbol of mythical permanence, turning the work into a bridge between the materiality of the ancient symbol and the abstraction of the astronomical one. We connect dots, search for figures, construct narrative lines to orient ourselves within reality; this composition, suspended between abstraction and figuration, embodies the principle of proximity—through which the mind unites distinct elements into a coherent whole—demonstrating how the organization of chaos is a fundamental perceptual instinct. In the bronze triptych, "Some things need an impulse to move (III, IV, V)", the binary becomes twofold, deepening the theme of transformation through biology and alchemy. Sinuous, pulsating yet crystallized, the three organic sculptures reveal themselves in all their symmetrical imperfection, reflecting the constitutive principle of most life forms. This barely perceptible asymmetry generates an ambiguity— a leitmotif of Pacelli’s practice—inviting a physical and personal reading. The viewer's perception is once again activated, called upon to complete or interpret the form. If the organic and potential shapes allude to an intermediate stage of matter, bronze embodies its alchemical counterpart. Historically, the crucible of transmutation into gold, the metal here becomes the herald of a path of inner transformation. The porous, chiaroscuro-marked hollows represent the impulse to evolve from raw matter to spirit, from the passivity of chaos to the creation of meaning. On the lower floor awaits "Nebulosae", another oil drawing devoted to the celestial dimension, this time crowded by a blanket of clouds. Forms in perpetual becoming, devoid of fixed contours, clouds are a threshold to a murky world, partially inaccessible, perhaps threatening. Whereas solar light previously suggested an almost positivist openness, it is now filtered, guiding us towards an uneasy yet necessary and complementary path. As Van Diepenbeeck reminds us, beyond the abyss of clouds lie infinite creative possibilities. Reality stops only when we decide not to push further. In some way, this is recalled by the second element of Tra la fine e l’inizio il nulla stelliforme, which emerges from the ceiling, offering itself to our gaze after having crossed the gallery walls. The two small works anticipate "Lassù, a milioni di kilometri, risiede l’immaginifico", the final installation of the exhibition, where the dense veil of clouds materializes, ready to be pierced one last time. This site-specific work closes the exhibition, condensing its themes into a total perceptual experience. A panel seals off the gallery space, leaving open only a narrow slit through which we are invited to observe a sidereal scene: a chimerical creature, seen from behind, abandoned in a moment of solitary rest and immersed in a landscape of sand, stone, and perhaps shells, deserted and almost sterile. The lens, the quintessential tool of scientific exploration, now bends to a poetic one: it no longer reveals an objective truth, but the projection of an archetype. The indistinct figure appears as an almost alien hybrid, born of our imagination the moment it is freely projected into the universe. The space beyond the lens dissolves into mystery, giving way to a mental space. Here, cosmic silence is inhabited by something fragile and indefinable, born from the encounter between our gaze, eager for form, and the darkness of the universe. The rumble is a place.