Eventually, the distinction between matter and emptiness had to be abandoned when it became evident that virtual particles could spontaneously generate from emptiness, and suddenly disappear again into it […] According to field theory, events like this happen all the time. Emptiness is far from being empty. On the contrary, emptiness contains an unlimited number of particles which are generated, and disappear in a never ending process. […] As the sūtra says: «Form is emptiness, emptiness is actually form»
Fritjof Capra(1)
The western world and its sciences and philosophies and religions all come from millennia of perceiving reality as a symmetry of universal objects, detached and existing apart from each other in an empty space and universe. A pointillistic reality generated by an external omnipotent creator, a reality of blacks and whites, general laws, and separate self-standing ontologies and existences. The discoveries and revolutions that came during the past century through the new physics,(2) showed a reality that is at the antipodes of the ideas on which our whole conception of the world is grounded. They show an interconnected reality, where not the separate items and beings, but only their interactions exist, they show a reality where nothing is actually empty, nothing is separate. It is a vibrating and pulsating reality of particles, beings, planets, galaxies appearing and disappearing, touching and changing continuously, beautifully, and eluding every attempt and concept that the brilliant philosophers, prophets, or scientists of the West has tried to represent for us. All that is void, disproven. From this new perspective, nothing in this world is as is seemed. The concept-shattering idea and feeling coming from a sudden change of perspective, the frightening and illuminating sensation coming with losing all that we considered safe and consolidated is at the core of the new works that the Italian visual artist with a background in mathematics Corinna Gosmaro presents to us with The Point’s Shadow. It is the doubt that follows the realisation that things might not be as they seem, the reflection that is set in motion when reflecting on our nature and the world around us. She writes: “Our inherent need to comprehend reality is both our condition and our paradox: the closer we try to get, the more that point, once seemingly fundamental to our perception, begins to cast a shadow. It reveals something else—something slightly different—that confuses us, challenges us, and compels us to reconsider ourselves.”(3) And it is the moment in which we can expand this idea from the ontological and phenomenological to the artistic and empiric, when we understand that that shadow Gosmaro is talking about is also the practice of painting, and how this technique intrinsically implies interpretation, and the way in which this interpretation implies the understanding of how every literal and metaphorical point in a painting is the shadow of something else, a reproduction. It is in this moment we can appreciate the richness of the fascinating and magnetic works by the Italian artist: at the crossroads between sculpture and painting, or somewhere else where neither of these two definitions applies, with an approach that one would define more conceptual than empiric, the Italian artist is able to fluently speak both a language of gestural and intuitive artistic creation and a discourse rationalising bright and intriguing ideas, like the one setting the tone to The Point’s Shadow.(4) And this capacity to transcend and cross lines between ideas and objects, between poetry and geometry, is the richness that makes these elusive and ethereal works, that could be mistaken for paintings, at the same time concepts in motion, fluid entities questioning our reality, and simple pictures, objects occupying a gallery space. Literal points and literal shadows, metaphorical shadows of metaphorical points that both elude our comprehension, as much as we intuitively already knew all about them.
Mattia Lullini
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(1) Our translation from the Italian edition of Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975).
(2) On the subject of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, a great introduction is Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland (2020).
(3) From an introduction to this exhibition by the artist.
(4) The idea of a point casting a shadow was inspired to the artist by Edoardo Camurri, Introduzione alla Realtà, Timeo (Palermo), 2024.
Corinna Gosmaro at NEVVEN, Gothenburg
Contemporary Art Library — Apr 10, 2025