A kaleidoscopic landscape of urnes, statues and amphoras in terracotta, bronze, alabaster and sandstone. A sophisticated entanglement of symbolic hand gestures, mythological scenes and rituals, allegorical flowers such as lotus, wild artichokes and asphodels. Here are the Etruscan heirlooms, as represented in the vast collection of the renowned Guarnacci Museum of Volterra, one of the twelve main capitals of ancient Etruria.

Immersed in such a mysterious universe, we are delighted to announce the upcoming opening of PROPHETIA, the second edition of the three-annual exhibition program Timeless Encounters 2022-2024, curated by KALPA and the Guarnacci Museum, and revolving around the celebration of the universality of artistic feeling and the fascination that ancient art still holds on our contemporary society and culture.

PROPHETIA embodies a contemporary prophecy, bringing to life a ritual of catharsis within differing temporal and spatial planes, the micro and macro. 

Tuscan contemporary artist Federico Gori (1977) creates an immersive installation connecting his etching and naturally oxidised copper elements with a selection of antiquity from the Museum's collection. The overall installation follows the division of the sky into the four macro sectors of Etruscan cosmology, each again divided into four, and each corresponding to a different deity.

While the cult of divination was for the ancient Etruscans the ripe fruit of a culture so linked to Mother Earth to profoundly believe in an interconnection between it and the cosmic elements of the universe, Federico Gori's work encapsulates the touching point between heaven and earth, copper and terracotta, contemporary and past.

PROPHETIA develops from the core of the artist's poetics, focusing on the concepts of time and metamorphosis, the encounter between differing temporal planes, and the impossibility of man dominating time and matter, so often elusive to all human logic.

Mysterious fluids emanate from these stones, from these objects, these images, erasing the abyss of time. 

- Massimo Pallottino, 1963

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Photography of artworks: Gabriele Cirillo for KALPA

Photography of Volterra: courtesy Maja Sfriso

KALPA INSTAGRAM