La personale 0 S di Piergiorgio Colone indaga la contemporaneità come istante presente, il momento “0” (Zero). L’opera di copertina, intitolata Contemporaneo, incarna pienamente questo concetto: un raggio luminoso, veloce ed effimero, scelto come supporto ideale per tradurre la fugacità e la natura immediata del presente.
La ricerca dell’artista esplora il rapporto tra tempo, spazio e percezione attraverso materiali tradizionali come il marmo e tecniche sperimentali, spaziando tra installazioni, proiezioni, incisioni, sculture e opere sonore. Ogni intervento crea un dialogo tra pieno e vuoto, presenza e assenza, durezza e fragilità, invitando lo spettatore a osservare e riflettere sul flusso continuo della realtà contemporanea. Le opere riflettono anche sul concetto di vita come sequenza di secondi e sul senso profondo del lavoro artistico, sottolineando le tracce lasciate dalle generazioni precedenti e legando la dimensione personale a riflessioni universali.
La mostra 0 S trasforma lo spazio della galleria Oksasenkatu11, nel centro di Helsinki, in un luogo di contemplazione e interazione, dove luce, ombra e lo sguardo dello spettatore diventano parte integrante dell’opera. Le opere selezionate esplorano il rapporto tra tempo, percezione e tecnologia, trasformando materiali tradizionali come il marmo in esperienze contemporanee e invitando lo spettatore a osservare l’ordinario da prospettive nuove. Nel complesso, la mostra propone un viaggio visivo e concettuale che collega passato e presente, arte e vita, tangibile e digitale.
“Nell’era digitale, tutto è effimero, interconnesso e immediato. Ciò che ci distingue ancora dalle macchine è la nostra capacità di riflettere su ciò che il calcolo numerico non può raggiungere: la capacità profondamente umana di guardare oltre, di interrogarsi sul futuro e di esaminare il nostro rapporto con i cambiamenti dell’ambiente e della società”, afferma l’artista Piergiorgio Colone.
Particolare rilievo nella mostra è dato alla serie di opere in marmo Ritratti d’artista, che celebrano le vite degli artisti italiani Fabio Mauri e Gino De Dominicis. “La finitezza delle vite degli artisti è incarnata nel marmo. Le loro esistenze sono rese come numeri – secondi vissuti – scolpiti nella pietra. L’eredità di Mauri e De Dominicis è onorata adornando questi numeri con foglia d’oro. Il peso del marmo ci ricorda le difficoltà di vivere una vita artistica. Il marmo, materiale spesso considerato eterno, lascia il segno, eppure, come ogni altra cosa, alla fine viene dimenticato nella polvere del tempo. Le opere rendono omaggio agli artisti che hanno osato vivere vite significative”, riflette il curatore Julius Valve.
Piergiorgio Colone – 0 S
The exhibition Piergiorgio Colone – 0 S examines the passage of time through artistic passion, kinship, labor, and spatiality.
“In the digital age everything is ephemeral, interconnected, and immediate. What still separates us from machines is our ability to reflect on what numerical computation cannot grasp: the deeply human capacity to look further, to ask the future questions, and to explore our relationship with changes in the environment and society,” Colone says of his exhibition.
In the first room upstairs are conceptual portraits of artists that resemble gravestones. These art works are dedicated to Fabio Mauri and Gino De Dominicis who were among the most respected Italian artists of their time, challenging contemporary conceptions of art through their practice. The total durations of both artists’ lives are engraved in marble in seconds, adorned with gold leaf. The seconds depict life as a linear timeline, in which the beginning and end points reveal life’s ephemeral nature. These two works are part of a series of four, which also includes conceptual portraits of Salvatore Mangione and Fabrizio Boetti. For the works, Colone conducted artistic research to determine the artists’ exact moments of birth and death.
In the back room upstairs is a work made from a rusted, worn industrial diamond blade from a circular saw. Colone’s grandfather was a stoneworker by profession and worked with marble. The work is engraved with the duration—measured in seconds—during which the blade was used to work marble in the workshop. Both rooms address time as it is spent by people in the act of working.
At the foot of the staircase downstairs is the exhibition’s eponymous work, 0 S (empty set, zero seconds), which seeks to capture a moment that is continuously reborn and continuously escaping. The projected work is not the walls, objects, or hidden corners of the gallery, but light itself—the number and the focal point of the moment—that returns the viewer to the present. The work constantly strives to begin again, yet continually returns to its point of departure. Chronos devours and blurs time.
The marble works seen in the corridor consist of layers of different marbles, decoratively perforated. The piercing holes at the center of the works are painted with a light-absorbing black pigment that disrupts three-dimensional perception. A single work at the end of the corridor, distinct from the series of three, also contains paper pages pressed between the marbles.
The installation in the final room features a mixed-media sculpture made of paper and marble, in which the weights of the marble and the paper are equal. Colone’s kinship is reflected in the materials of the works: the marble represents the perseverance, strong work ethic, and relentlessness inherited from his paternal grandfather, while the paper used in the sculpture represents the softness, lightness, and calm inherited from his maternal grandfather, who worked at a paper mill. In the holes that pierce the works, Colone sees his own transience as an artist and as a human being, and a cross-section through time. The heavy pieces of marble hold the papers together like a bound book. From a vinyl record playing in the room, the sound of marble being worked can be heard; the marked number of seconds corresponds to the combined lifespans of the artists depicted in Colone’s conceptual portraits. The artists’ labor in art is stripped down to mere sound—to its most fundamental essence—so that of a lived life only the sound of working marble remains.
Combining conceptual art, traditional sculpture, installation, and media art, Piergiorgio Colone (b. 1995) graduated in 2025 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone, Italy.
Piergiorgio Colone – 0 S
9 Jan — 1 Feb 2026, Oksasenkatu 11 Gallery
The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00–18:00.
Further information and interview requests:
Curator Julius Valve
