RI.GIO.CA.MI.X.
I dedicate this project of mine to the modern traveler: joyful, cultured, sometimes superficial, but always refined, hungry for images, a tireless aesthete.
Why RI-GIO-CA-MI-X
From the sacred to the profane. The body exposed for ever and ever, amen.
This study brings together four hundred illustrations, the result of a journey through time and the history of Italian art that is closest to my heart. It is a personal, intimate journey in which I encountered artists who chose the body as a means of expression: a vehicle for social, religious, and cultural messages. Artists who knew how to use eros not as provocation for its own sake, but as a visual language capable of capturing the viewer’s gaze and shaking their conscience. An invitation to reflect, to feel, to let oneself be moved.
STEP 1) The study
The authors
I began by studying five artists, whom I freely reinterpreted.
From the Riace Bronzes to Giotto, from Canova to Michelangelo, to a fifth artist deliberately included to “disrupt” the harmony and generate visual tension (artist “x”).
The Riace Bronzes – 2000 BC, unknown artist, Magna Graecia
Two figures that emerge from time as archetypes of power and beauty. Their masterfully sculpted bodies become instruments of social communication: nudity is never provocative, but rather an expression of elegance, physical strength, eroticism, and power. A universal language that spans the centuries.
2 Boards – 50 Tiles
Board dimension: 90 cm (L) x 110 cm (H)
Giotto – ca. 1400
With Giotto, the body takes on a narrative and spiritual function. It is a vehicle for religious concepts, but also for earthly emotions. The kiss on the mouth between Joachim and Anne, and that between Jesus and Judas, are among the first kisses depicted in art history. They conceal a subtle and ambiguous erotic component that opens up new expressive possibilities.
1 Board – 25 Tiles
Board dimension: 90 cm (L) x 110 cm (H)
Canova – ca. 1800
Canova pursues neoclassical perfection, an ideal beauty that appears distant from eroticism. Yet, in the poses of his characters, in the muscular tension of his heroes, one senses a vigor that borders on eros. It is a restrained, sublimated eroticism that creeps into the search for pure form.
BLACK AND WHITE: 2 Boards – 90 Tiles
Board dimensions: 162 cm (L) x 110 cm (H)
COLOR: 4 Boards – 140 Tiles
Board dimensions: 126 cm (L) x 110 cm (H)
Michelangelo – ca. 1500
Michelangelo uses nudity to exalt man, highlighting the flaws that separate him from the divine, but which at the same time bring him closer to God. His nudity is never pornographic: it is strength, fragility, awareness. In an ecclesiastical context dominated by modesty and hypocrisy, Michelangelo breaks the rules, stripping man naked in order to elevate him. His message of love for humanity and for God transcends all superficial perceptions: nudity becomes spiritual, total, human.
1 Board – 40 Tiles
Table dimensions: 144 cm (L) x 110 cm (H)
STEP 2) La Magna
L’Opera Magna
400 fragments of chaos and memory: a mosaic that tells the story of humanity.
From this research, I created five panels, each consisting of eighty drawings. Together they form the magnum opus RI.GIO.GA.MI.X, a corpus in which the languages of the individual masters intertwine, contaminate each other, and transform.
A pulsating mosaic, where the observer is simultaneously assaulted and embraced by a flow of figures that are apparently similar, yet always different.
OPERA MAGNA: 5 panels of 80 tiles
Panel dimensions: 176 cm (L) x 180 cm (H)
STEP 3) Final product:
The tiles
Variations on a theme that blend together in an endless array of combinations: RI.GIO.CA.MI.X.
This material gives rise to the final product: a potentially infinite series of TABLETS, each one unique; each is constructed by combining designs inspired by different authors, and each tablet can in turn be combined with others in an unlimited number of configurations.
This is how “RIGIOCAMIX” was born: the work becomes an open, modular system in continuous regeneration, where variety and compositional freedom are an integral part of its meaning.
4-TILE TABLETS: 36 cm (L) x 44 cm (H)
6-TILE TABLETS: 54 cm (L) x 44 cm (H)
“X”: the disruptive element
“X” embodies a modern, direct, and uninhibited eroticism that is never pornographic: an eroticism free from malice and hypocrisy, which asserts its naturalness.
The juxtaposition of the drawings deliberately generates confusion and disturbance, a perceptual oscillation that forces the gaze to stray from the beaten track of tradition. It is a fertile disturbance that opens up new paths, inviting us to suspend automatic thinking in order to embrace curiosity and the unknown, everything that has not yet been imagined.
In this dialogue, the spiritual and the material intertwine, the erotic coexists with the classical, and color becomes a vehicle for provocation and joy. The work thus moves between tension and harmony, between rupture and continuity, transforming the initial disturbance into an opportunity for reflection and renewed freedom of vision.