Private collection, Turin

Work accompanied by authentic on photograph signed by the artist

In an era in which proximity to outer space has become part of everyday life, these stones fallen from the sky and displayed in secure cases in major museums around the world appear less threatening. Yet, if one pauses for a moment to reflect on the possible origins of these agglomerates of “other” matter, to imagine the places from which they come – asteroids of improbable shapes, desert planets lashed by icy winds, supernovae or white dwarfs, constellations with poetic names such as the “Swan” or the “Lyra,” galaxies thousands of light-years away, bottomless black holes – these gray stones gradually become unsettling, almost menacing, to our eyes.

As we observe them, a kind of unease takes hold: they carry within them the immensity of the universe. I believe that Pietro Gilardi’s polyurethane meteorites, suspended mid-air between sky and earth, aim to reclaim the sacred dimension of the “stones of light” of the Dayachi, based precisely on this sense of disorientation, this contact with an astral and distant infinity, yet at the same time firmly rooted in the collective imagination.

(from the exhibition text curated by Ludovico Pratesi)

Galleria Nova, Rome