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A sphere, magically suspended in space, gravitating in a uniformly dark area may be a warning or a threat, the naked presence of the most simple and perfect geometric figure bringing with it a genuinely telluric and primeval energy, is at the centre of the composition, borrowing its shadows, lights and hidden aspects from its depths. From its distant bastion, in its mute condition of a weightless object, like an icon that is both secular and sacred, the sphere questions its own mystery, which it seems to want to project towards the spectator. The sphere is perhaps the most bewitching image in the work of Tirelli, who demonstrates a great awareness and artistic culture, and who recognised metaphysics as one of the basic sources for 20th century art, which then stimulated the birth of what was defined as the last historical avant-garde movement – surrealism. Without borrowing anything at all for his own work, which was always totally abstract, from De Chirico’s metaphysics (and more significantly without any influence from Magritte’s “stories”), Tirelli has inherited from that world the alienating feeling of absence given to our existence by the sudden and out-of-context appearance of a common object – his sphere is an arcane presence suspended over our today.