I would like to clarify my point since it is easy to be misunderstood and not being understood at all is even easier.
In my painting, the meaning that I give to the domes is meant to symbolize the sacred-beyond, simply because this symbol belongs to practically every culture on earth.
Having said so, the next step is to answer the question: What is the reason that makes me insist on the theme of the sacred and again, in what sense is this term insistently referred to?
In my opinion, the sacred, that is the beyond, is referred to that area of the human experience which involves the inescapable mystery of what exists, or “is”. The difference lays between “being” and “not being”. The Man perceives the universe and he tries to discover the laws and the physical origin through science. However, the metaphysical origin, that is to say “where the existing did come from” is not a question that science asks or that it could be able to ask. Nonetheless, this question is the question that makes the Man exactly what he represents in the evolutionary universal scale.
Starting from the boson passing through the atom, the amoeba, the crab, the whale, the Primates, the perception of the world does not exist except as a need of feeding and breeding. Many animals have more or less accentuated emotional experiences; however, only the Man has the perception of time and of his future death. Only the Man has the perception of history meant as a reconstruction of events placed between a deductible past and a hypothetical future. Only the Man has the awareness of the existing world which if it did not exist it would have as counterpoint the “not being” . Actually, the “not being” does not seem a possible thought for the human cognitive structure and yet it stands at the basis of the question: “where does the existing come from?”
When I represent the dome I refer to the sacred, which from now on I will simply define as beyond in order to avoid misunderstandings, and by it I intend to evoke the relentless and the great mystery between the existing and the nothingness.
The Man, the only one in the evolution from sub atomic matter to life, is confronted with this mystery, to witness the awareness, the dismay, the pain of having a limited knowledge; but at the same time the intuition of an unlimited power that transcends him.
It could be boldly said that “God” is now being recognized through the Man in a huge temporal path; the possible knowledge that the universe has of himself is for now up to the Man. Then the Man cannot elude the experience referred to the mystery of being, unless by trivializing his own presence in the world and compare it to any other form of animal life.
My assumption, that I could define philosophical, is that what constitutes the universe – or perhaps infinite universes – and that we could call conventionally God, at the beginning is simply represented by substance and energy (the atomic world and its laws). The spatiotemporal expansion of this phase of the Universe-God somewhere and somewhen creates the life, from elementary forms to more and more “intelligent” beings, able to perceive themselves and the world around them. I hypothesize that at the present time the Universe-God is becoming aware of his own existence and structure through the man. The evolution of the future knowledge, its limitations or its inconceivable grandeur represent the eternal Beyond which man tends, or my domes allude to.
In conclusion, I believe that in the world of art, and generally in the world of culture, this presence of the Beyond, this mystery that transcends the man and affects him with the weight and wonder of the knowledge, both visual and of thought, could deserve an important focus of attention.
Roberto Perotti