The term Hourglass comes from the Greek klepsýdra, Literally “steals water”, because in ancient times this instrument was very widespread in its version precisely with water; a fascinating ploy for measuring time, it symbolizes the all-human attempt to count, almost to sing, even what is most elusive and innumerable in the world: time.
For centuries we have been counting hours, days, years, but who can really say how much a minute is worth? And, above all, how incredibly subjective is the perception that each of us has of the same handful of seconds? Days that fly like moments, hours that sometimes seem endless… it’s all a matter of time.
In her hyperrealistic depictions, Francesca Trusso manages to give a face to the ineffable, representing time through its uninterrupted flow: as the sand of the hourglass slides quickly so it dissolves, melting, a juicy lemon, a tangible sign of an inexorable but necessary transformation that involves each living organism. Everything flows, everything transforms, everything changes: but it doesn’t vanish, it doesn’t die, because after the process, just turn the hourglass over and start counting again. What is empty is filled and what is full is emptied, in a harmonious and incessant alternation that regulates the universe, human life, relationships and feelings of existence. And so, in an eternal pursuit, opposites oppose each other to feed an ancestral balance that dominates all things; like a scale that weighs value, adding where there is none and removing where there is in excess. In this way, through the search for a photographic detail, Francesca Trusso manages to give substance to time, body to the ineffable, quantity to the uncountable, managing to immortalize the only thing that humans try in vain to capture in a shot: time.

Edited by Valeria Rufini Ferranti