Getting lost is an experience inherent to life. It can happen when what once seemed stable suddenly ceases to be so, and the familiar path becomes uncertain. From this experience of disorientation emerges Il Bosco – La Selva Oscura, Luca Eliani’s new body of paintings: fourteen works on wood panels through which the artist gives form to a transitional moment in his own life, transforming it into a broader reflection on the human condition.
The reference to Dante’s dark wood becomes the starting point for an exploration that moves beyond narrative and into the realm of the inner self. Here, the forest is not simply a landscape, but the representation of a mental and emotional space in which one loses a sense of direction. It is a moment when exhaustion, fear and uncertainty take hold, but also one in which what usually remains in the background suddenly becomes more visible.
Against intense blue backgrounds, figures emerge from a suspended, profound, almost nocturnal dimension. Colour becomes the space of vision: an immersive surface in which anxieties, expectations, doubts and possibilities take shape. Animals appear as sudden, silent presences, encountered in the dim light of the forest.
Each creature carries a symbolic meaning, connected to a different condition of human experience: fear, caution, judgement, anger, suffering, but also anticipation and the possibility of rebirth. Yet these are not symbols to be interpreted according to a single, fixed code. The animals retain their autonomy, inviting viewers to establish a personal relationship with what they see. Nature thus becomes a mirror through which something more intimate can be recognised.
The painting itself reflects this tension. Passages of striking precision, at times approaching hyperrealism, coexist with freer brushstrokes. The contrast between detail and dissolution, between recognisability and ambiguity, opens up a space in which natural imagery becomes a perceptual and emotional experience.
The series thus takes shape as a journey through an unknown territory: each work is a fragment of this passage, an encounter, a possible stage along the way. A map of inner states unfolds through the presence of animals and the depth of colour.
At certain moments in life, losing one's sense of direction can take on particular significance. The inner forest may then appear as a difficult and inhospitable place, but also as a space in which it becomes possible to pause, observe and recognise what we were previously unable to see.
In Eliani’s work, observation itself becomes a means of finding direction. To look is to question; to question is to seek a possibility. For asking questions and attempting to find answers is not merely an exercise in self-awareness, but a necessity deeply connected to our very survival.
The forest, therefore, is not simply a place of disorientation. It is also where a new way of seeing can begin.
Within the deep blue of Luca Eliani’s paintings, among animal presences emerging from the shadows and forms that sometimes become defined and sometimes elude us, Il Bosco – La Selva Oscura tells precisely this story: the moment when losing one's way can become an opportunity to find a new direction.