Fabio Marullo at ArtNoble Gallery, Milan

ArtNoble Gallery is pleased to present “YELLOWSAKE – giallocanarino”, a solo exhibition by Fabio Marullo with a critical text by Elio Grazioli.

“YELLOWSAKE – giallocanarino” presents a selection of outcomes from Fabio Marullo’s extensive research project on 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 and physical phenomena connected to the natural world, transforming their internal and invisible energy into metamorphic images. At the center of the exhibition is uranium, an ambivalent element—at once beneficial and dangerous—a primordial substance forged by cosmic explosions and brought to Earth as it became embedded in the minerals that gave rise to the planet. While the collective imagination today tends to associate uranium exclusively with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, Marullo instead reactivates its original potential, reconnecting it to that primordial nebula of cosmic gases, liquids, and dust from which the Earth originated.

“YELLOWSAKE – giallocanarino” 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 yet operative, becomes a paradigm of a reality that exceeds human control, opening onto an original dimension in which imagination, perception, and knowledge intertwine.

The exhibition unfolds across four rooms, conceived as a path of progressive immersion into the phenomenological itinerary of this metal. From orogenesis and its cosmic origin, the journey moves to primordial waters that accompany it on its millennia-long passage through the maternal womb, and finally to gaseous atmospheres and the perceptual effects they can exert on human beings.

In relation to this trajectory, a canary appears alongside the paintings, recalling the history of mines, where these birds signaled the presence of toxic gases, becoming sensitive indicators of danger. In this role, its presence assumes a strong symbolic as well as perceptual value, configuring itself as a liminal point—a threshold marking the alternation between a state of control and one of risk.

In the final room, ‘yellowcake’ appears: a symbolic replica of the process of processing and oxidizing uranium-bearing matter, a term laden with symbolic resonances linked to processes of purification.