In Terra Incognita III, Orazio De Gennaro evokes the mystery of unexplored lands through a surface alive with color and erosion. Veils of turquoise collide with ochres and deep blacks, producing an effect that oscillates between depth and radiance. The composition feels at once geological and atmospheric, as though charting a landscape suspended between ruin and renewal.
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In Terra Incognita III, Orazio De Gennaro evokes the mystery of unexplored lands through a surface alive with color and erosion. Veils of turquoise collide with ochres and deep blacks, producing an effect that oscillates between depth and radiance. The composition feels at once geological and atmospheric, as though charting a landscape suspended between ruin and renewal.
De Gennaro’s choice of materials—lime, graphite, and earth pigments—anchors the work in a tradition of making rooted in his native Sannio, where layers of history, from Pompeii to medieval frescoes, remain inscribed in stone and wall. Yet Terra Incognita III is not an act of representation but of reimagining: a contemporary abstraction that transforms surface into terrain. Its tactile complexity recalls Cy Twombly’s Mediterranean-inflected gestures or the chromatic expanses of Nicolas de Staël, but here the dialogue is with time itself. The work opens a space where viewers navigate the shifting boundary between what is lost and what endures.
