The 11th edition of the COMEL Award, the international competition enhancing the aesthetic use of aluminium, is reaching its most important moment.

The exhibition Alluminio, sotto la Superficie (Aluminium, Beneath the Surface) will be inaugurated on Saturday, October 26th, at the Spazio COMEL Arte Contemporanea. During this event, the 13 works that, in the jury’s opinion, best-valued aluminium and interpreted this year’s theme in the most original way will finally be on show.

Aluminium, Beneath the Surface, the title of the exhibition and also the theme of the 2024 edition, takes its cue from aluminium’s ability to put into action a defensive mechanism by creating a film, a thin protective layer to resist external aggression. Beneath the surface, aluminium remains itself and preserves its peculiarities. Similarly, the most sensitive people hide behind masks to defend their feelings and interiority. The invitation to the artists was to go beyond appearances, straight to the heart of things and show, through their works, what is most hidden, least evident, yet most true.

The artists were able to interpret such a delicate subject well through an incredible variety of techniques and, with rare sensibility, really digging beneath the surface of things. The 13 competing works come from Italy, Macedonia, Belarus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Greece. They will compete again this year for the COMEL Award assigned by the jury and the Audience Award, which is the prize for the work that receives the most preference from visitors to the exhibition, who will be invited to vote for their three favorite works until Sunday, November 10th.

The exhibition Aluminium, Beneath the Surface, will be opened on Saturday, October 26th, at 6 p.m. and will be open to the public every day from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. until Saturday, November 16th, when the winners of the 11th edition will be awarded, also at 6 p.m.

The 13 finalists: Sasho Blazes (Ohrid, Macedonia); Maria Elena Bonet (Minsk, Belarus/Sant’Elia Fiumerapido, FR, Italy); Massimo Campagna (Naples, Italy); Stefania De Angelis (Rome, Italy); Rebecca Diegoli and Francesca Vimercati (Pavia and Besana in Brianza, Italy); Gianluigi Ferrari (Altilia, CS, Italy); James Fausset Harris (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia/Carrara, MS, Italy); Robert Hromec (Bratislava, Slovakia); Rosy Losito (Bari/Latina, Italy); Dimitar Minkov (Pleven, Bulgaria); Gloria Rustighi (Massa, MS, Italy); Karolina Stefańska (Krakow, Poland); Achilles Vasileiou (Athens, Greece).