Giuseppe Castellano for GC Light Italia, Under the Surface, 2025, Acrylic

"Beneath the Surface" explores the boundary between the visible and the invisible, between what appears and what remains hidden. The work—or rather, the cycle of works bearing this title—is composed of images collected, salvaged, and carefully selected from flea markets, second-hand dealers, or contexts where memory is deposited in forgotten objects.

Each subject is the result of a deliberate choice, a visual and symbolic encounter with what has already been experienced and is now presented to contemporary interpretation. But the subject, however recognizable, is never fully revealed to the gaze.

A veil—literally—covers the scene: brushstrokes of black acrylic paint, enriched with silver glitter, create a patina that obscures, filters, and transforms. It is not simply an aesthetic gesture: it is a conceptual act that acts as both a barrier and an invitation. The partial darkness forces us to look longer, deeper, to try to read beyond. Black, often associated with mystery, the unconscious, and the unknown, blends with the shimmer of silver, suggesting that even in opaqueness there is light, and that what is hidden can still speak.

The result is a continuous interplay between revelation and concealment. The viewer is called not only to observe, but to decipher, imagine, and reconstruct. The original images, now partially submerged, evoke a memory that is no longer linear, fragmented and reinterpreted by the pictorial intervention.

In this sense, Below the Surface also becomes a reflection on our relationship with images of the past, on what we choose to preserve, cover, or rediscover. Each work is unique, unrepeatable, as is every memory, every gaze, every attempt to go beyond the surface of things.