Discovered in 1789 by William Herschel – coincidentally, the same year as the French Revolution – eight years after the planet Uranus, from which it takes its name, uranium is an extraordinary metal. Known above all for its toxicity and radioactivity, it is a symbol of threat and panic, but in reality, in minimal doses, it also has healing properties – remember the double meaning of the Greek pharmakos, poison and medicine depending on the quantity – and is present in many products we use every day. Its main characteristic is in itself a powerful imaginative charm, with connotations that border on the metaphysical: radiation has been a mystery for centuries, a form of magic, its meaning expanding to the very idea of energy and thought, beyond matter, beyond physics.

Everything changes inside the cave: space and time, and our perception of them. The space closes in around us and seems to go on forever, like a labyrinth. Time seems suspended, or stretched out to geological, primordial dimensions. As natural light fades, the rock walls reveal a fluorescent constellation of microparticles embedded in the rock under Wood’s light, and the magic begins. The depths of the earth resemble a starry sky, while fascination is tinged with anxiety, fear of radiation sets in, breathing becomes labored, and perception falters.

Miners are well aware of this condition. Their history is marked by it, as the toxicity of uranium fumes was a major concern for them. Marullo has identified two issues in this regard. One concerns the effects of intoxication, or hypoxia, particularly the perceptual and visual effects. Several testimonies describe them as visions of “dark shadows closing in,” so-called tunnel visions with colored halos, a gray-bluish blur with yellow veins, and “flashing yellow and blue lights” at the edges of the field of vision, known as phosphenes. These colors vary depending on the gas and its severity, from blue/gray for lack of oxygen to green/yellow for excess carbon dioxide. These colors then become the main colors of Marullo’s works in this project, including the phosphene and blurring effects that characterize vision. Light, color, matter, and form are at the center of the project.

The second theme is protection from the final outcome of poisoning, and this is where the canary comes in. Since carbon monoxide is transparent and odorless, miners sought a method to detect a leak before it was too late. First they used flames, which naturally went out in the absence of oxygen, then the idea of using canaries came to John Scott Haldane, a Scottish physiologist who invented oxygen therapy. Canaries are excellent early detectors of carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases, and their signals allowed miners to get to safety in time. In order not to sacrifice the poor little animals, Haldane had also designed a special cage to protect them, equipped with an oxygen tank that was activated to revive the canary at the first signs of suffocation. British mines stopped using canaries in 1987, when electronic gas detectors, which were much more accurate and effective, were introduced.

Here, yellow reappears as a color no longer associated with poisoning but rather as a tool for salvation. This is the “yellow purpose,” the yellow of purpose and the purpose of yellow. The yellow canary (giallocanarino) in the title has this meaning, it is the indicator of the two sides of color, and at this point of the painting itself—and here is the reference to Polke—in turn poisonous and salvific, in turn uranic.

The exhibition will feature a real taxidermied canary (with every guarantee that no violence was perpetrated on the little animal) so that the reference is clear, materialized, even dramatized in its position and expression, not left implicit. Because Marullo has this vision, tunnel vision in turn, we might say, of art that is not only open but consubstantial with scientific, historical, and anthropological research, which for him constitute the necessary expansion of that aesthetic. His projects are always structured in such a way as not only to highlight this preliminary research, but also to incorporate and amplify it aesthetically, thereby integrating painting and sculpture into the immediate contemporaneity of their most recent developments, emphasizing their appeal rather than their claims.

The exhibition, which revisits a project begun several years ago and still in progress, is divided into four rooms-sections, a layout that is at once a journey into the bowels of the earth and also into oneself and art, an alchemical, initiatory, and aesthetic journey. Each room has its own dominant colors, reflected in the walls, floors, and spaces that are darkened or enhanced by their light. It speaks of the processes of transformation of matter in relation to the space-time dynamics of our physical and psychic reality. In the exhibition project, Marullo investigates chemical-physical phenomena related to the natural world, transforming their internal and invisible energy into metamorphic images.

Yellowsake – giallocanarino (Yellowsake – yellowcanary) initiates a reflection on our relationship with the Earth, inviting us to consider matter not as an immobile reality, but as an active field traversed by processes of latency, accumulation, and transformation. Uranium, invisible but active, becomes a paradigm of a reality that exceeds human control, opening up to an original dimension in which imagination, perception, and knowledge intertwine.

Discovered in 1789 by William Herschel – coincidentally, the same year as the French Revolution – eight years after the planet Uranus, from which it takes its name, uranium is an extraordinary metal. Known above all for its toxicity and radioactivity, it is a symbol of threat and panic, but in reality, in minimal doses, it also has healing properties – remember the double meaning of the Greek pharmakos, poison and medicine depending on the quantity – and is present in many products we use every day. Its main characteristic is in itself a powerful imaginative charm, with connotations that border on the metaphysical: radiation has been a mystery for centuries, a form of magic, its meaning expanding to the very idea of energy and thought, beyond matter, beyond physics.

Everything changes inside the cave: space and time, and our perception of them. The space closes in around us and seems to go on forever, like a labyrinth. Time seems suspended, or stretched out to geological, primordial dimensions. As natural light fades, the rock walls reveal a fluorescent constellation of microparticles embedded in the rock under Wood’s light, and the magic begins. The depths of the earth resemble a starry sky, while fascination is tinged with anxiety, fear of radiation sets in, breathing becomes labored, and perception falters.

Miners are well aware of this condition. Their history is marked by it, as the toxicity of uranium fumes was a major concern for them. Marullo has identified two issues in this regard. One concerns the effects of intoxication, or hypoxia, particularly the perceptual and visual effects. Several testimonies describe them as visions of “dark shadows closing in,” so-called tunnel visions with colored halos, a gray-bluish blur with yellow veins, and “flashing yellow and blue lights” at the edges of the field of vision, known as phosphenes. These colors vary depending on the gas and its severity, from blue/gray for lack of oxygen to green/yellow for excess carbon dioxide. These colors then become the main colors of Marullo’s works in this project, including the phosphene and blurring effects that characterize vision. Light, color, matter, and form are at the center of the project.

The second theme is protection from the final outcome of poisoning, and this is where the canary comes in. Since carbon monoxide is transparent and odorless, miners sought a method to detect a leak before it was too late. First they used flames, which naturally went out in the absence of oxygen, then the idea of using canaries came to John Scott Haldane, a Scottish physiologist who invented oxygen therapy. Canaries are excellent early detectors of carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases, and their signals allowed miners to get to safety in time. In order not to sacrifice the poor little animals, Haldane had also designed a special cage to protect them, equipped with an oxygen tank that was activated to revive the canary at the first signs of suffocation. British mines stopped using canaries in 1987, when electronic gas detectors, which were much more accurate and effective, were introduced.

Here, yellow reappears as a color no longer associated with poisoning but rather as a tool for salvation. This is the “yellow purpose,” the yellow of purpose and the purpose of yellow. The yellow canary (giallocanarino) in the title has this meaning, it is the indicator of the two sides of color, and at this point of the painting itself—and here is the reference to Polke—in turn poisonous and salvific, in turn uranic.

The exhibition will feature a real taxidermied canary (with every guarantee that no violence was perpetrated on the little animal) so that the reference is clear, materialized, even dramatized in its position and expression, not left implicit. Because Marullo has this vision, tunnel vision in turn, we might say, of art that is not only open but consubstantial with scientific, historical, and anthropological research, which for him constitute the necessary expansion of that aesthetic. His projects are always structured in such a way as not only to highlight this preliminary research, but also to incorporate and amplify it aesthetically, thereby integrating painting and sculpture into the immediate contemporaneity of their most recent developments, emphasizing their appeal rather than their claims.

The exhibition, which revisits a project begun several years ago and still in progress, is divided into four rooms-sections, a layout that is at once a journey into the bowels of the earth and also into oneself and art, an alchemical, initiatory, and aesthetic journey. Each room has its own dominant colors, reflected in the walls, floors, and spaces that are darkened or enhanced by their light. It speaks of the processes of transformation of matter in relation to the space-time dynamics of our physical and psychic reality. In the exhibition project, Marullo investigates chemical-physical phenomena related to the natural world, transforming their internal and invisible energy into metamorphic images.

Yellowsake – giallocanarino (Yellowsake – yellowcanary) initiates a reflection on our relationship with the Earth, inviting us to consider matter not as an immobile reality, but as an active field traversed by processes of latency, accumulation, and transformation. Uranium, invisible but active, becomes a paradigm of a reality that exceeds human control, opening up to an original dimension in which imagination, perception, and knowledge intertwine.