Marco Rondena

Technique: Mixed Media

Year: 2025

Size unframed: 24×30 cm

Description:

With ‘Phantom’ I wanted to explore the darkness of the soul, that inner zone where fears, invisible wounds, thoughts that find no voice are deposited. In the centre of the work, a silver cross stands out against a black, rippled, imperfect background – like the very surface of the unconscious. It is not a material cross, but a visual, symbolic, almost ethereal presence. Its cold glow contrasts with the living, tormented matter that surrounds it.

The blackness of the background is not empty: it is tension, it is bodily memory, it is skin of the soul traversed by silences and disturbances. The cross appears as an unstable apparition, a form that emerges from the darkness without ever imposing itself, as fragile as a thought that cannot be held back.

Phantom speaks of introspection and inner pain. It is a Gothic image, in the emotional and spiritual sense of the term: an evocation of the weight of the invisible, of silent suffering, of the search for meaning in one’s own shadow. It does not give comfort, but invites us to listen to what troubles us.