The ground floor of a historical building in Ragusa Ibla becomes -in the month of August- a place where one can gather ("Locus Amœnus"), contemplating works that result from the encounter of Art, Language and Design. The Third Edition of a project started in 2021, which is part of a research aimed to highlight the potential of the South Eastern Sicily area, interpreted from a contemporary perspective.

Natural and Artificial, Mystical and Poetic are underpinning the curatorial project, which materialises in an intimate manner, making allusions to the surrounding environment, sometimes obvious and sometimes more oneiric.

Chiara Zocchi’s “Tenda-Testo”, composed of very light aluminium sheets ( materially reminiscent of ex-votos, but also the 'page'), in which words are engraved, which -crossed by light- are projected into space. The possible movement of these sheets produces a sound that reveals the musical character of the text (it is in fact an unreleased song, entitled 'Tu che sai').

"Carper “Giro” by Giuseppe Arezzi, woven with a cellulose fibre rope, narrates the iconography of the vernacular wheel, understood as the first object of mobility. It is a partly empty circular form, neutral in colour (grey), which dialogues with the floor, revealing the freshness of the stone.

“Serra/Cappella” by Michelangelo Menu is a photograph of a site specific installation of a greenhouse nestled in the Ragusan countryside, whose golden vault makes it look like a place of devotion.

Visually dialoguing with the greenhouses intended for mass consumption on the coast behind, it seems to construct with them a critical allegory but also a new possibility. Two details of the Serra/Cappella golden vault are presented in the exhibition, backlit, to reveal, as the light of the sun would, the fragility and the sacred meaning of the use of gold leaf.

Containers “Pillars” by Antoine Espinasseau are matrix-objects, made of thermoformed plastic, with archaic geometry, as if they were archaeological relics, architectural elements of a world to be built or that is already in ruins (reference to the many Greek ruins on the coast). In the exhibition they are arranged to seem as if they stand at the base of a building, which is not there. Large in size, as if they should still support columns, they have, however, been emptied, paradoxically assuming the role of a container.

“Minne” ceramics from Marə are a local production. They are former bowls, which, presented upside down, “tuned inside/out”, convert their original function into a meaning/symbol of fertility.