Younis Tawfik
Within the Soul of matter

A path that has lasted a lifetime, an eternity, in ascent, never stopping on the route of sufferance and solitude. His face hardened by the reflection of the sun that mirrors the clear Sicilian sky, his hands immersed in the parched soil and in the warm, vibrant and near to fluid colours of his far off Sicily, his dreamy glance is flying, vanishing into the silence of space.
When one lives over time and it is used as a means, memory evolves and it becomes a new dimension of one’s existence. Faces and sensations, memories and impressions are the crystallized material that is poured over the canvas, spurts out of the marble block, sways inside the tree trunk creating poetry for the cosmos.
It is difficult to penetrate into the secrets of marble, make it soft, versatile and turn it into beings intent on living: but it is possible when the artist’s spirit guides his fingers, so they pierce the stubborn heart of metal, wood and marble, changing them with a pulse and yearning for lightness.
Enzo Sciavolino is that artist who is able to inject his essence and desire to fly into the veins of his works; fully aware of the suffering of someone who is immersed in this life and trapped in his own existence.
Even from the first glance, Sciavolino’s masterpiece, “In the Circle of my Life” gives the impression of being faced with one’s own reality.
Right from the first glance, one does not only interpret history, human life, events, and tales, pain and sufferance within Sciavolino’s works but the soul that is hidden inside the materiel emerges as well until it enwraps the glance, and dies out during contemplation giving the impression of being in front of one’s own existence.
The sea’s waves, symbol of the will to live and the spirit, evolve as unfurled wings that spread upwards, pushed onwards by their craving to reach the sky. The circle stretches into space like the “0” of ocean, pushing into space and opens a window onto the contours of earthly delights, recalling the sublime scenery of paradise and rekindling the spirit to climb the mountains towards eternal retreat. Trees that grow to reach the peak of nothing to watch over the expanses of Paradise made by children.
Lastly the artist’s face looks back over his own life, in communion with his soul, as if seeking to return to his mother’s womb to be born again and rise again and again in his own image, like the Phoenix. Some of the fundamental elements that appear throughout Sciavolino’s work reappear in this piece: the sea, faces, and very bright lively colours. The last of these elements, he ably and lovingly juxtaposes to create contrasts, or harmonies between the coldness of greys and the warmth of blues. The faces and elements that Sciavolino has brought with him from his native land and be reconstructed in a foreign land like an enormous monument to memory.
Poetry develops naturally from material becoming a soul, when the music of one’s memories emanates from every corner that has beendug up, the notes of childhood that have never died out, and the sound that only Sciavolino’s colours are able to play:

                               I take the light from the sun,
                                                    blue from the sky
                               and a handful of sand
                                                    and some water
                               I give a shape to your face
                                                                   moon…
                               I contemplate it at length
                                                                   And cry
                               I pass it over my body
                               tormented by nostalgia
                                                                  and memories…
                               Your foreign face
                                                                  is always sad.
                               Your lonely face
                                                                  is far away                           and cannot see
                               me.