METAFORE NEL PAESAGGIO (8 August - 16 August 2025) by Aldo Palazzolo and Michelangelo Menu, curated by Margherita Ratti, is part of the summer exhibition at Villa Iblea, the artist residency directed by Philippe Terrier-Hermann and Yann Valladon in the countryside of Frigintini, Ragusa.

The unique context of the site is the starting point. A small rural church, which is part of a traditional residential settlement in the Hyblean Mountains, is ‘crossed’ by the new artwork LUCE SOLIDA (Solid Light) by the young French artist Michelangelo Menu. Inside the church, the series of photographs SEGESTA A PASSO D’UOMO (Segesta at Walking Pace) by Syracusan photographer Aldo Palazzolo is exhibited for the first time.

Symbolic and characteristic elements are brought together to create a field of forces between the natural and the sacred.

In his sculpture LUCE SOLIDA, Michelangelo Menu transforms an immaterial ray of light into something tangible. The sculpture interacts with the rural landscape made of ancient stones and cultivated fields, breathing new life into it through the reflection of the gold leaf covering the eight-metre-long stainless steel cylinder. The landscape and the small church are intrinsic to the artistic process. LUCE SOLIDA fits into the context just like the adjacent natural elements.

Aldo Palazzolo's series of photographs, entitled SEGESTA A PASSO D’UOMO, captures fragments of a golden temple inside the empty church. Through a play of rigorous and refined perspectives, solids and voids, shadows and colonnades, the photographer observes the relationship between the architecture of the Temple of Segesta, the hill on which it stands, and the surrounding nature.