RizzutoGallery

Francesco De Grandi

Info: RizzutoGallery is pleased to present Hierophanie. Il conflitto, il sacro, la natura, the first solo exhibition by Francesco De Grandi at the gallery’s German location, at Ackerstraße 34, Düsseldorf. The exhibition title Hierophany refers to the manifestation of the sacred through matter—the epiphany of the divine revealed in the earthly realm. De Grandi transforms painting into a field of revelation: the canvas becomes a space where the visible opens to the invisible, where the power of nature merges with the archaic sense of mystery. De Grandi’s painting is not mere representation but a ritual gesture—an evocation, an epiphany. Weapons of hunting and war appear as ritual archetypes, symbolic extensions of sacrifice, emanations of a jealous and vengeful deity: the destroyer god, who recurs cyclically throughout human history, then as now. The gods depicted in these works are never Olympian or orderly. They are panic-stricken, terrifying, or ambiguous figures, connected to telluric, nocturnal, mythical powers. De Grandi works in harmony with the intuition of Mircea Eliade: the gods manifest in unexpected places and gestures—in the forest, in blood, in the dance of sacrifice. Each painting is a small theophany, a partial, enigmatic, burning apparition. (…)