Tommaso Spazzini Villa: The Time That’s Left

The things that sustain life are quite often hidden from view. Roots beneath the forest floor. Blood under the skin. Belief behind action. The forces that connect us rarely announce themselves. They work underground.

This is where the exhibition begins.

The upstairs is devoted to Spazzini Villa’s Radici (Roots) series. Each drawing depicts giant root systems, rendered in delicate graphite, spreading across the pages of ancient books and manuscripts. No trunks, branches or leaves. Only roots.

Step closer, and the books begin to reveal themselves: Bibles, Qurans, Talmuds, Buddhist manuscripts, Dante’s Divine Comedy. Texts that have shaped how people have understood themselves and the world for centuries.

The roots don’t consume these books so much as embrace them. They curl around the pages like protective arms. Each root system is slightly different, but together they suggest one immense subterranean network, connecting every text to the same living organism.

The symbolism isn’t subtle, and it doesn’t need to be. Different faiths. Different languages, Different cultures. Beneath the surface, similar questions, needs, and longings.

Downstairs, the exhibition shifts into something quieter and stranger.

In Ombre (Shadows), four found leaves are pinned inside illuminated shadow boxes. Their shadows transform into unexpected renderings: a human profile, a prehistoric Venus figure, a circus elephant balancing on a pedestal. The setup is simple. The effect seems impossible, miraculous even.

That’s where The Time that’s Left lingers. Truth isn’t always found in what we see. Sometimes it emerges through what’s hidden, ignored, or overlooked. The shadow can matter just as much as the object creating it. One thing leads to another. Everything connects.

Tommaso Spazzini Villa (b. Milan, 1986) lives and works in Rome. He studied art history at Rome’s La Sapienza University and took drawing and painting classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. He also holds a degree in economics from Milan’s Bocconi University. In 2025, the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education commissioned Vivere, parlare e vedere questo cielo (Living, Speaking, and Seeing This Sky) for the Jubilee.