The door for the distance and the key to infinity

Fernando Miglietta, artwork for Pope Francis

Fernando Miglietta dedicates one of his artworks to Pope Francis.

The title is “The door for the distance and the key of the infinite“. This work is part of a series called “Dialogue with the infinite”. An installation by Fernando Miglietta, an artist also involved in the culture of design, especially in the field of architecture, founder and director of the International Institute for Forms and Languages ​​research of the contemporary and of the magazine Abitacolo.

He was touched by the signs of suffering that the world caught in the face and in the walking of the Pope, in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Basilica, without any faithful around, during the prayer linked to the pandemic and for which the Holy Father invited the world to unite. It happened on March 27th.

“I asked the Lord to stop the epidemic: Lord, stop it with your hand. I prayed for this,” said the Pope in an interview with La Repubblica. Miglietta linked this quote with his work in question: a key and a hand, suspended, try to “open the sky”. Miglietta consequently decided to dedicate it to Pope Francis, communicating it to him.

The symbol in Miglietta‘s work deals with the theme of distance (a sadly current theme today). The hand of God stands above the sky and holds the key that points to heaven. One guesses that, under the sky, there is man, humanity. The sky is emblematically expressed with spots of blue and not through of a realistic or mimetic representation. Atmosphere of penumbra which is contradicted by glimpses of a composed sky and, as mentioned, and only hinted at.

This happens in the central iconography (the hand stretched downwards, the sky, and the key), while, on the left and right, two small circles circumscribe, as symbol of perfection, two moments of heaven, like two lights that pierce the twilight. An intense story, not without trompe-l’oeil, and where memories of Mark Rothko and, for a certain environmental rarefaction, of Anish Kapoor could be seen.