A genuine native of the Campania region, Ruggiero carries an indelible mark: the excruciating perception of reality as a contrast between life and death, as a struggle between light and darkness, as a destiny between Hell and Paradise. In this dilemma, he opts for Purgatory, that is, a middle ground that enters the night but heads for dawn, a human and temporary solution, just because one must pass through the evil and then leave it behind. In this way Pompei tragedy becomes the most beautiful natural museum of open-sky human moulds and Giovanni Ruggiero the inventor of its opposite, namely, the introrelief. Carving inward in the matter, he shows the interior of the sculpture itself. These are no negative matter carvings but sculptures obtained by directly subtracting matter from matter. With this human bust impression, carved into the white-and-bleu ceramic of the Fabbri vases, the artist reveals the matter we are made of. He tells us that the natural vacuum does not exist and that absence is yet but another face of presence. In between, the memory of each existence.