Agostino Arrivabene, “Martyrium (San Sebastiano)”, 2011, Oil on Linen, 101.6 x 91.4 cm, Private Collection

Arrivabene’s masterful paintings have the ability to stop time and create suspended intense moments outside quotidian time. Arrivabene has written of his work as forming a “wunderkammern” or “a room of curiosities,” such as those created to display the trophies brought back by adventurers returning from foreign expeditions. This points to the painter, Arrivabene, as an explorer  returning with  bizarre and extraordinary fragments or treasures  from  strange, new visionary worlds.