Month: May 2021

TO MARS

The visions that fueled our collective dreams blur, lose their charm, and strength. Many of them turn out to be mirages, and some reveal their ruinous consequences. However, collective imagination consistently creates new myths and visions of a possible future where we can pour our utopias, with the promise of emerging from this process of calamity.

From the fear of the great cataclysm arises a new utopia, a new vision projected beyond the boundaries of the earth, towards the unexplored universe, in interplanetary space, to surpass known boundaries and abandon the ship destined to sink into the maelstrom.

A collective dream repeated many times in the past, but one that can once again help us nurture our hopes. A sparkling finale, but with a slight aftertaste of resignation and general powerlessness in the face of the inevitable destiny we leave to our native home.

A tragicomic epilogue looms, responding to the need for a new vision, horizons to explore, new boundaries to colonize. A new world to inhabit, exploit, and submit to our desires. A world in which to forge again the sublime illusion.

TELEPORT

The desert

“The Desert” is an installation of a large-format painting on which a video is projected.

The two mediums, painting and video, interact with each other and the two superimposed images create the vibrant optical illusion of a dazzling metropolis. This is the place of the “pursuit of happiness” of the individual, the place where we can realize our desires and our ambitions.

The bright lights of the metropolis shine and make the intricate set of buildings pulsate, the vital whirlwind of the city that never sleeps. The viewer observes the unreal panorama, the mirage, and the illusion is inevitable.

But an apocalyptic sky thickens over the metropolis, foreshadowing an uncertain future. It is an omen that begins to sow doubt about the myth of the abundance and fertility of the future.

Hotel Chihuahua

The obsession with paradisiacal places continues with the Chihuahua Holiday series. A parody of unreal images, where our tropical islands, places of worship for billions of tourists, are transformed into places of interplanetary communication: a new horizon into which to pour our utopias.

Chihuahua Holiday is series composed of several paintings and video slides that represent the collective dream of tourism and, at the same time, show the hidden face of this phenomenon: the inevitable implosion of this dream. With environmental and climatic changes and with the pressure of the touristic wave, the dream can only collapse upon itself and leave the place to be destroyed by this contemporary vision.

The last mountain

A series of paintings in which we find the idealised and stereotypical mountain landscape. These reflect the postcard image we have of this mythical landscape. Where every snow-covered peak and valley is represented in an ideal balance: the perfect panorama seen from the terrace of the chalet where we spend the weekend in relaxation.

Yet another illusion of our time. It is an image whose future we know is destined for memory. The signs are now inescapable and we all know them, and these places that seemed seemingly inviolable to us are being rapidly transformed by the consequences of our global society.

An imagery destined for extinction and condemned to the past. Images that seem to be frozen in the past, wrecks that are about to return to their archaic form of stone, of which only a plastic and artificial memory will remain.

Comfort zone

The idealization of nature returns in this series of landscapes with a stereotypical aesthetic that perfectly meets the criteria of the digital world: one where dreams are standardized and beauty is the dominant element. These images that come to us from the internet form our current idea of nature. These days, the knowledge of what is natural is created through the observation of a monitor: you can enjoy the perfect landscape calmly sitting on your couch.

The paintings of the islands were created from collages of images of beaches and cliffs found on the internet, symbols of ideal vacation destinations. The mountain landscapes follow the same aesthetic, but their elaboration starts from photographs, which are then digitally elaborated and finally transformed into a painting. Throughout this process, all details are developed: the colors are brought back to their ideal balance and the landscape is modelled. The result is an aesthetic that is both monotonous and relaxing, where artificially constructed forms and contrasts are perceived as natural and absolutely “perfect”.

Relax beach & Farwest

These two installations are a combination of painting, video projection and sound. The projection overlaps the paintings in order to provide a vibrant optical illusion that evokes the contemporary vision of the much-desired paradise island. The spectator, comfortably seated on a beach chair, sits in front of this seductive and warm vision accompanied by soft Caribbean music. It is a dance between illusion and reality.

Farwest, a large-format triptych, depicts a silhouette of a woman in a room observing the tropical landscape on the horizon. At first glance, this technique appears to be very realistic, but the more you interact with the image, the more your attention shifts away from the silhouette of a woman in the foreground to the landscape on the horizon. By plunging into the landscape in the background, we realize that its texture is fragmented like a pixelated mosaic. By superimposing a moving video on a painted landscape, optical games form a sort of visual illusion that pushes both the woman and the viewer towards a virtual and digital horizon.

This shows the call of an unknown and unexplored land, exotic and tropical. It is the vision of a new digital world, an unlimited horizon, and an image that carries within it the utopia and the vision of the future.

The only immutable element of the image seems to be the young woman’s pregnancy. It is an ancestral call, unviolated by the illusions of time, which leads us to reflect on the present and future reality.

comfort zone

The idealization of nature returns in this series of landscapes with a stereotypical aesthetic that perfectly meets the criteria of the digital world: one where dreams are standardized and beauty is the dominant element. These images that come to us from the internet form our current idea of nature. These days, the knowledge of what is natural is created through the observation of a monitor: you can enjoy the perfect landscape calmly sitting on your couch. The paintings of the islands were created from collages of images of beaches and cliffs found on the internet, symbols of ideal vacation destinations.