Valeria Vaccaro Italy, b. 1988

Valeria Vaccaro studied sculpture at the Albertina Fine Arts Academy in Turin as a student of Luciano Massari’s. She started exhibiting at a very young age taking part in collective exhibitions and she was shortlisted as one of the best artists in contemporary Art, in Berlin at the Coffi Festival.

Her work gives you the impression of looking at something banal and then the wonder happens when you realise that what you're looking at is quite different. Abandon pallets and transport crates are decontextualised from the original setting and offered to the viewer as work of art, where the container unexpectedly presents itself as content. Which seems pallets and crates burned wood, revels to be instead sculptures made out of a more noble and complex nature, that is to be carved in marble with a performance of a disconcerting technical expertise. Veins, shades and textures are reproduced in such a real way as to deceive everyone: only touch can reveal the unexpected marble algidity, which stands in clear antithesis with what is represented, that is fire and wood itself, "warm" material par excellence. The alleged wood turns out to be icy and unexpectedly hard to the touch, jeopardising the senses and the perception of the viewer, who experiences with his hands a truth other than what he sees.

Contrary and opposite concepts are combined into a single object, thus generating unexpected paradoxical forms: the wood becomes cold, the marble burns and carbonises, the crate contains nothing but appears to be the work of art itself.

Vaccaro’s sculptures and two-dimensional work is linked to the study of the alchemical transformation (that does not occur in nature) and to the unexpected transformation of non-combustible materials. The marble allows the artist to use a noble material, transforming it into everyday objects that are combustible in nature, creating an effect of hyper-realism through the use of a non-combustible material.

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