The word "icon" has two meanings: its Greek etymology refers to the concepts of "image" and "likeness", while its use generally refers to religious painting, in more recent times the term has been associated with the idea of model , emblematic figure. The image - its ability to represent a presence, between appearance and disappearance, shadow and light, to depict a physical space and to generate an empathetic emotion with visitors - is at the center of this exhibition conceived for the exhibition spaces of Punta of Customs and the Venetian context specifically, constantly enriched by the endless dialogue between East and West.

The icon - vector of the passage towards another world and other states of consciousness (contemplation, meditation) - brings us back to a transcendental reality with the power to actualize the presence of the invisible, creating an emotion or an aesthetic and spiritual dazzle. These are the iconostases, devices that hide the officiants of the cult behind a wall of images, like a door to the divine world. They are works that generate spaces like many pauses or places of meditation in the era of the saturation of images and their misappropriation. Living paintings, rituals and everything that makes the image a space of relationship between human beings and that transcends them constitutes the heart of the reflection proposed by the exhibition.

Citing Marie-José Mondzain who in her philosophical reflection dedicated to the Russian filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky underlines how the author of the film Andrej Rublëv, through his cinematographic poetics: "rips the icon from the Church and associates the adventure of the gaze with the constitution of a new assembly". The collected works invite, through the exploration of the very meaning of image, a sharing of what is visible.