SUPERNOVA
FIGURAZIONI COSMICHE
Solo Exhibition
Curated by Simona Cigliana and Francesca Barbi Marinetti
CHAMBER OF THE DEPUTIES
Sala del Cenacolo | Complesso di Vicolo Valdina | ROMA
1st - 8th February 2018
SUPERNOVA - FIGURAZIONI COSMICHE
From Chicago to Rome
Following the success at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, Enrico Magnani presents his "Supernova" painting collection in Italy for the first time, in dialogue with the frescoes of the Sala del Cenacolo at the Chamber of Deputies (Vicolo Valdina Complex, Piazza Campo Marzio 42, Rome).
Curated by Francesca Barbi Marinetti and Simona Cigliana, the exhibition "Supernova – Cosmic Figurations" will open on Thursday, February 1st, at 4:30 PM. The show is organized by D.d’Arte with the support of Coopservice, Kaiti Expansion, and Espresso Bolognese.
On display are thirteen acrylic works on multilayer cardboard and aluminum panels, painted by the artist without ever touching the surface—neither with his hands nor with brushes. Instead, jets of air and water propel the pigment, recreating the nuclear explosions that mark the final stages of a star’s life. A symbol of death and rebirth, the "Supernova" collection resonates with the figure of Christ dominating the Sala del Cenacolo’s 16th-century fresco of The Last Supper, painted by an unknown artist.
"The meaningful coincidence between the number of artworks and the attendees of the Last Supper," explains architect Francesco Lenzini, designer of the exhibition layout, "inspired an additional narrative layer, materialized through the spatial arrangement of the pieces. An inclusive form that welcomes us and, in a way, makes us participants in a cosmic mystery—open to interpretation, whether scientific or mystical."
"Nebulae, star clusters, forming galaxies, colorful clouds of cosmic gas... Enrico Magnani’s exhibition," writes Simona Cigliana, "transports us to a sidereal setting, where the infinitely large mirrors the infinitely small, and the observation of celestial phenomena projects us into a psychic, meditative dimension of extraordinary visionary power."
"For Enrico Magnani," concludes Francesca Barbi Marinetti, "art is a tool for research and knowledge. Symbols, as universal references from which all sciences and arts develop, grant access to vast worlds unreachable by logic alone. Art acts as a catalyst, awakening dormant mental realms and drawing us closer to hidden truths through intuitive and prophetic processes."
ART AS AN EXPERIENCE OF TRUTH BEYOND SCIENCE
Francesca Barbi Marinetti
Enrico Magnani's works – with their abstract interplay of matter and color, symbols and alchemy, nigredo and albedo, centrifugal and centripetal forces – tell the observer an ancient and powerful story. A tale of microcosms and macrocosms, woven through an artistic language that draws from archetypes of distant spiritual traditions, both Eastern and Western, separated by time and geography yet remarkably rich in evocative parallels. It is this universality of language that makes Magnani's art accessible to all, its fascination spilling across painted surfaces like a journey through time and the profound meaning of existence.
For Enrico Magnani, art is an instrument of research and knowledge. A deceptively simple statement, given the artist's deliberate choice to leave behind his years as a nuclear physics researcher – confined within the rigid boundaries of scientific discipline – to pursue knowledge in other dimensions. Magnani chose to let the right side of his brain breathe, transforming through his art into an open channel capable of gathering, listening, and ultimately communicating messages that have traversed human evolution: questions about existence and the beauty of the cosmos.
This dual formation – science and art, matter and spirit, intuition and objectivity – has given birth to works where contrasts coexist (earth and sky, light and darkness, life and death, masculine and feminine, yin and yang) in a continuous dialogue with the four fundamental elements: earth, fire, air, and water.
The Supernova series represents Magnani's first exploration of air and water in their purest form – using sprays, jets of water and air to propel pigments onto surfaces without physical contact – while addressing themes of death and rebirth. True to their name, these works depict the colossal nuclear explosions of stars reaching the end of their life cycle. Through this series, Magnani powerfully develops the themes of creation born from chaos and the cyclical nature of existence.
The thirteen Supernova panels capture the peak luminosity of stellar explosions, where heavy elements coalesce to form new stars and new life. Symbols of the cross (Supernova No. 8, 9, 10, 12, 13), the circle (No. 5, 12), and the triangle (No. 7) express this return to order, alongside the egg (No. 10, 11) as a symbol of fertility.
The cross – a geometric motif predating Christianity, rooted in pagan and esoteric traditions – dominates the series, sometimes inscribed within a circle. Here, it unites sky, earth, time, and space through centripetal and centrifugal forces. In ancient Egypt, it symbolized reproduction and rebirth (the Ankh); as a compass of cardinal points (north/south, east/west, earth/sky), it guides us toward spiritual north, an inner journey. The circle, representing perfection and unity, holds dual symbolism: magical and celestial, intellectual and spiritual. It is temple and unbreakable boundary, linked to the eternal cycle of life – embodying both the masculine sun and maternal waters. In Jungian psychology, it mirrors the Self and the totality of the psyche, even echoing the iris of eyes that seem to hold entire microcosms.
The triangle (Supernova No. 7), mathematically tied to the spiral, symbolizes ascent from multiplicity to Oneness and transcendence. Pointed upward, it represents fire (masculine); downward, water (feminine).
For Magnani, humanity remains the measure of the universe through its pursuit of knowledge – yet solutions to all mysteries lie in the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, between the darkness of introspection (nigredo) and purity (albedo), where alchemical gold, the philosopher's stone, may be found. As universal references from which all sciences and arts emerge, symbols become gateways to vast worlds unreachable by logic alone. Art thus transforms into a catalyst, awakening dormant mental realms and drawing us closer to hidden truths through intuitive, visionary processes.
This holistic conception of art – long recognized (think of Leonardo da Vinci) and debated throughout the 20th century – is now reaffirmed by contemporary thinkers from Hans-Georg Gadamer onward: art offers an experience of truth beyond the paths of science.
THE COSMIC FIGURATIONS OF ENRICO MAGNANI
Simona Cigliana
To fully understand and appreciate an artist's work, it is always essential to examine the stages of their journey and reflect on the evolution of their imaginative and expressive world.
The recent retrospective exhibition *L’Oro della Terra - 100 opere del periodo astratto* (Reggio Emilia, Chiostri di San Domenico, February 11 – March 5, 2017) finally provided an opportunity to assess Enrico Magnani’s decades-long artistic research, inspired by ancient wisdom and guided by what we might call—borrowing a Futurist phrase—"the lyrical obsession with matter."
Magnani has always centered his reflection and practice on the study of this indefinable principle, which, as the ancients believed, is the mater and flesh of the world—the concrete substrate of existence from which life takes form. As a nuclear physicist, he first investigated matter by probing the nature of its components and their interactions; as a painter, he later interrogated, pursued, and reimagined it through a long creative journey. In Magnani’s work, matter becomes both an object of speculation and a source of poetic emotion, a medium for contemplation and, as pigment and color, a tool for aesthetic expression. Above all, it assumes the role of a primordial essence—the raw, "original" matrix from which a cosmic and individual process of transmutation unfolds.
His earliest collections on these themes date back to the mid-2000s, depicting planets, mineral gardens, chessboards of sacred seals, and celestial conjunctions rendered as stylized mandalas. Labyrinths crowned with elemental symbols, archetypes of the inorganic, eclipses, and lunar phases emerge in stark geometric compositions. Around 2010–2011, his focus sharpened around conceptual cores of esoteric influence: the Five Elements series and works inspired by the I Ching, where abstract divinatory signs materialize in bands of incandescent color, as if revealing destiny in the act of embodiment.
The explicitly alchemical phase began between 2012 and 2013. His palette narrowed to scarlets, and the drama of matter unfolded on canvas—the artist-demiurge capturing its struggle toward higher purposes. "An invitation to look inward," Magnani notes. Yet black and carmine clash; pigments coagulate and crack. Beneath fissured crusts, magma churns until the darkness of "earth" splits, yielding—as in a seismic birth—the golden spark, the noble particle purified from mud.
Alchemical references grew even more explicit in the Opus and Work series, where titles, hues, and textured surfaces evoke the spagyric stages of nigredo and rubedo—key moments in the Philosopher’s Great Work. Here, acrylics thickened into dense layers, mixed with sand, clay, plaster, stones, plastics, and gold leaf. From fiery chaos, translucent spheres emerged—elixir-stones meant for sharing, as in a Eucharistic communion with the viewer.
The Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail, appeared in some works, symbolizing the eternal, self-contained cycle of becoming. Magnani intervened with a luminous pearl, momentarily arresting its flaming rotation.
By 2013, a blue note began to surface. Browns, ochres, and purples transmuted into their chromatic opposites—blues and indigos—evoking marine (Neptune studies) and celestial realms, even as circular, "maieutic" compositions persisted. Now, gold rose from aquatic depths or gleamed in astral space.
The 2015 installation Cosmic Hug (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan) distilled these developments into a 49-panel mosaic narrating the mystic Big Bang—an exultant conflagration bursting from the sacred syllable "OM," the primordial sound from which, according to the Upanishads, all creation arose.
And so we arrive at Supernova, Magnani’s latest collection, first exhibited in Chicago (September 2017) and now debuting in Italy at Rome’s Camera dei Deputati (Vicolo Valdina). Here, reds, blacks, and golds intertwine with cobalt and periwinkle, resolving into a dialectic of complementary unity. Colors expand as if levitating in a stellar breath; paint becomes ethereal, gaseous, transfigured—a volatile gold freed from dross by the artist’s alchemical athanor.
Star clusters, nascent galaxies, plasma vortices, luminous gas clouds... These cosmic figurations culminate a journey through matter’s many states, distilling meditations on the origin of the universe and knowledge. They evoke an interiority that contemplates and dissolves, lightened and vastened into impersonal, ultra-subjective space.
Yet the circular framing—reminiscent of a microscope’s lens—and the technique (acrylic on metal laminate, air jets, dripping, selective heat-drying) pull the gaze into the microcosm’s depths (Supernova No. 3, 5, 11), into life’s secret core, where ontogenetic and vegetative processes unfold.
"As above, so below," declares the alchemist’s golden maxim. The Supernova series immerses us in a realm where the infinitely vast mirrors the infinitesimally small, where astronomical observation—via visual analogy—leads us into the cell, and from there, through imaginative suggestion, into psychic and spiritual dimensions.
Whether the mysteries of spagyric art can be realized here and now is a question without easy answers. We may hope so—as we strive for personal and collective evolution. What is certain is that Magnani’s alchemical quest has borne fruit: the Supernova works stand as radiant testament to the expressive power of his visionary ambition.
SET UP SUPERNOVA
Francesco Lenzini
To curate a space is to construct within it a new horizon of meaning – weaving invisible connections between dialectical pairs: work|context, artist|audience, place|visitor. This marks a shift from the indicative to the subjunctive mode of existence, a reversible yet profound transformation that engages us physically and psychologically. The curated space invites multilayered perception, casting us as protagonists in a new narrative.
Every exhibition thus presents a unique occasion, demanding from the curator a fresh interpretation of the artist’s work—even when, as here, the collaboration is longstanding and follows a major retrospective.
Installing the Supernova collection in the Sala del Cenacolo (Vicolo Valdina complex) posed a dual challenge: to magnify the power of Enrico Magnani’s latest cycle—works of immense poetic resonance—while forging a dialogue with the extraordinary architectural setting.
The curation strategy highlights the space’s prestige through a poetics of intangibility: the artworks rest on transparent, self-supporting, self-illuminating structures, custom-designed for this exhibition. These plexiglass forms—intentionally dissonant against the hall’s ornate decor—inhabit the space, their emitted light guiding viewers along the artistic journey. Lightweight and monolithic, the supports dematerialize, leaving the paintings suspended in a dreamlike dimension. Their opalescent glow mirrors the Supernova collection’s ethereal yet profoundly organic nature.
The symbolic alignment between the number of artworks (13) and the attendees of the Last Supper inspired an additional narrative layer, realized through spatial arrangement. This inclusive design welcomes visitors as participants in a cosmic mystery—open to scientific or mystical interpretation—where art and sacred history converge.
The pictorial cycle “Supernova”
The painting cycle "Supernova" synthesizes and reconciles, more than ever before, the duality of science and mysticism that has always been present in Enrico Magnani’s entire artistic production. The artist aims to draw attention to the phenomenon and consequences of these immense nuclear explosions that mark the end of a star’s life: the Supernova. All the material released by the explosion is at the origin of the formation of new stars. Thus, the supernova becomes a symbol of death and rebirth, of the cyclical nature of the universe. But there is more: within these spectacular cosmic events, elements heavier than iron are formed—elements that make life as we know it possible. Therefore, we can say that the Supernova holds meanings that go far beyond astronomy.
From the chaos of the explosion, matter slowly aggregates into increasingly ordered structures, eventually giving rise to life, and finally to human beings—the endpoint of creation and of the material universe. In these works, the perfection of geometric lines of triangles, circles, and crosses interacts with the chaos of color explosions, creating a balance between order and disorder. These geometries belong to humanity’s cultural and spiritual heritage, echoing an essence that, as Plato suggested, transcends matter by existing solely in the world of ideas.
Remembering that everything exists within everything else, Supernova connects the macrocosm with the microcosm, the universe with humankind, science with mysticism—a hymn to life, its complexity, and its magic.
From a technical standpoint, this painting cycle introduces a major innovation. It is created not only through pigment but also by exploiting the properties of air and water. Although the use of the four classical elements has always been a foundational aspect of the many techniques Magnani has employed throughout his abstract production, Earth (Yin) and Fire (Yang) were certainly more prominent and evident. Now we find the same duality of masculine and feminine, Yin and Yang, but expressed through the dominance of two other dual elements: Air (Yang) and Water (Yin). During the entire creative process, the painted surface is never touched by the artist—neither with hands, brushes, nor any other tools. Only splashes of color, sprays, jets of water and air create the forms and colors from which the artworks come to life.
La mostra è curata da:
Francesca Barbi Marinetti e Simona Cigliana
Allestimento a cura di:
Arch. Francesco Lenzini
La mostra è organizzata da:
Con il supporto di:
Main Sponsor: Coopservice
Sponsor: Kaiti Expansion
Sponsor tecnici: Espresso Bolognese e Casale del Giglio
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Inaugurazione: 1 Febbraio 2018 - ore 16.30
Orari di apertura: dalle 10.00 alle 18.00 - chiuso sabato e domenica
Ingresso libero con documento di identità
Camera dei Deputati
Sala del Cenacolo | Complesso di Vicolo Valdina
Piazza Campo Marzio 42, Roma
