06 august 2026, Flor Linckens
Mirco Marchelli and the musicality of silence
Last weekend, Rama Duwaji (artist, style icon and the wife of Zohran Mamdani, making her New York's First Lady) shared fourteen artists who are currently inspiring her to make art herself. At the very top of her list was the Italian artist Mirco Marchelli. Curious? On Sunday, 9 August (11:00 am–6:00 pm), the artist will open his second solo exhibition at Hilde Vandaele Gallery in Watou.
Mirco Marchelli was born in Novi Ligure in 1963 and currently lives and works in Ovada, in the Italian region of Piedmont. He initially trained as a musician and played the trumpet in Paolo Conte's orchestra. In the 1990s, his focus shifted to the visual arts, yet composition and music have remained a palpable presence throughout his work, expressed through rhythm, variation, improvisation, structure, harmony and volume, as well as through carefully placed silences. During this period, Marchelli developed a distinctive visual language in which art, music and poetry seem to find each other. In 2011, his work was presented in the Italian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. He has since exhibited at various venues, including Palazzo Fortuny in Venice and the Museo Archeologico in Acqui Terme.
The title of his exhibition at Hilde Vandaele Gallery, 'Silenzi d'oro' ('Golden Silences'), immediately sets the tone. In his practice, Marchelli explores how silence can be more than the absence of sound, and how it can open up both a physical and a mental space. His works often exist somewhere between painting, assemblage and sculpture. At first glance, Marchelli's compositions appear to consist of a warm and restrained palette, simple geometric patterns and a highly reduced visual language. Yet those who spend more time looking discover exciting textured surfaces, marked by scratches, discolouration, omissions, contrasts, relief and subtle material transitions. As a result, the works do not reveal themselves easily and their meanings are never fully pinned down.
This sense of openness is reinforced by the associative and sensory titles of his works, which alternate between the poetic, the humorous and the enigmatic. On his Instagram account, he has shared paintings with titles such as 'Campo di fiori finti' ('Field of Artificial Flowers'), 'Pueril giardino religioso' ('A Childlike Religious Garden'), 'Arietta pioggerellina' ('A Breeze and Drizzle'), 'La rivalsa di un fiore' ('The Revenge of a Flower'), 'Acqua in bocca' ('Water in the Mouth', or more freely translated, 'Not a Word About It') and 'Regine della notte' ('Queens of the Night').
Marchelli also frequently works with materials that carry a history of their own, and are therefore anything but neutral. Materials like plaster, wax, cement, textile, jute, wood, terracotta, ceramics, various types of paint and found everyday objects are all imbued with a new context. In doing so, he also builds on the tradition of Italian Arte Povera. Scratches, discolouration and other imperfections are deliberately incorporated into the image rather than concealed. Through his work, the artist seeks to capture elusive concepts such as time and memory. And his compositions often refer to the world beyond the studio, despite their abstract nature.
