"Sometimes a speck of dust — tiny, fallen from the sky — is enough to reorder the world’s questions."
At the MuPa, the threshold of Domenico Dell’Osso’s exhibition seems to absorb the city’s noise. You step inside and everything slows down. Once upon a time there was the world isn’t an exhibition path; it’s a suspension. An artist returns to his hometown ahead of the major national stage in 2026, choosing to do so through a work that speaks of origins, responsibility, and the future.
Twenty-three monumental canvases, created with pigments and meteorite dust, form a body of work that explores the relationship between the individual and the vastness beyond with rare emotional precision. Dell’Osso doesn’t build icons — he restores presences. Galileo, Marie Curie, Leonardo, Martin Luther King and other figures of history emerge from cosmic backgrounds like beings summoned to take a stand. Their signatures, placed at the center of each composition, are instinctive and vulnerable gestures — a direct point of contact with the viewer. Below, the artist’s small “little man” crosses each canvas with the quiet determination of questions that refuse to settle.
The installation is immersive without relying on spectacle. The twenty-three works are enveloped by a soundscape created for the occasion by Fabrice Quagliotti, leader and frontman of the Rockets, twenty-three independent tracks intersecting within a shifting acoustic landscape, free of any digital synchronization. The visitor becomes part of the system, and every movement alters the experience. It is an environment that reacts to human presence like a sensitive material.
The path leads to a large 150×300 cm canvas that gathers everything and amplifies it. A constellation of signatures — renowned figures and ordinary people, with no hierarchy — pulses above a symbolic planet. At the center, a sentence cuts through the space with the calm of a statement and the force of a riddle: Once upon a time there was the world. Not nostalgia. Not alarm. A question that lingers: what are we willing to safeguard of the world we inhabit?
That this preview takes shape in Ginosa is not an ornamental choice. It is a tribute to the artist’s roots and, at the same time, to the cultural vision that gave life to the MuPa. The initial drive of Nando Ria — founder of the museum and a steadfast advocate of accessible, participatory art — continues to resonate as an active legacy, carried forward today by the artistic direction of Piero Giannuzzi. The exhibition takes its place within this history, in a venue created to open paths rather than guard relics. Schools and young people are an integral part of the project, not marginal recipients.
Dell’Osso puts it in a sentence delivered without emphasis: “If even a fragment of this journey stays with you, it will be the most precious sign to me that something has truly been shared.” A statement that carries the tone of a passing of the torch.
The exhibition will be open from 6 December 2025 to 18 January 2026. Admission is free.
As you leave, you’re left with the sense that the universe is not only elsewhere, but a subtle weave running through us — something art can make visible for an instant.
Considered by critics to be the forefather of Italian pop surrealism, Dell’Osso is also well known for having been selected as a finalist in some of the country’s most prestigious art awards, including the Arte Laguna Prize, Premio Ceres, Premio Terna, Premio Open – Venice, Premio Dalla Zorza, and the Combat Prize. He has also won the Premio Arte Mondadori, the Celeste Prize, the Pio Alferano Prize, and the Zuanazzi Prize.
His work has attracted significant attention in the worlds of entertainment, cinema, and music, thanks to several collaborations with leading figures in literature and the musical landscape.
Among these, the cover he created for Caparezza’s album Museica stands out—now considered one of the most original in the Italian music scene and recognized as one of the five best artist-designed covers in Italian discography. The album received the Tenco Prize for Best Album of the Year and achieved double platinum status.
One of his paintings, presented to the management of Iron Maiden, was selected among the three final proposals in the technical evaluation process for the official cover of the album Senjutsu. Although his “samurai little man with a sword” remained a proposal, it was so appreciated that Eddie, the band’s iconic mascot, appears on the final cover of Senjutsu wearing samurai armor inspired by that very imagery.
Universal Music also chose one of Dell’Osso’s works for the cover of the album Mozart for Babies (Decca Music Group Limited – London), performed by pianist Roberto Prosseda. Over the years, Dell’Osso has also collaborated with the Rockets, overseeing the artistic direction of the Last Train to London music video, the picture disc Time Machine, and the album cover for The Final Frontier.
Beyond ABI (the Italian Banking Association), he has collaborated with numerous companies, including Universal Music, Decca Music Group Limited London, Ceres, Mondadori, Costa Cruises, Benetton, Terna, and Frankie Garage.
To date, through both group and solo exhibitions, he has held more than forty shows across Italy.
His works, in addition to being showcased in private galleries, have been exhibited in major group shows at the Venice Arsenale, Art Miami, Pratt Institute – The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery (New York), MAMbo Museum – Bologna, Madre Museum – Naples, Centro Pecci – Prato, MAXXI Museum – Rome, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo – Turin, Palazzo della Permanente – Milan, Spazio Oberdan – Milan, Teatro dal Verme – Milan, Fondazione Luciana Matalon Museum – Milan, Palazzo dei Congressi – Rome, Fondazione Cini – Venice, Roma Eventi Convention Center – Rome, Ex Convento dei Teatini – Lecce, Arte Fiera – Bologna, Arte Padova, Art Verona, Miart, and Artissima.
