FANTASTIC PORTRAITS
Public Art Project
Spazio Gabbiani
Summer Autumn 2025
Since the summer of 2025, for the first time, the entire Fantastic Portraits series—part of my ongoing Puzzling Pop project—has been exhibited together in Venice, in the windows of a historic former shop.
What makes this project unique is not only the completeness of the series but also the unconventional way it engages the city. Rather than being confined to the inside of a gallery, the works face outward, filling seven large windows of a historic Venetian palazzo—once the residence of Casanova and directly across from Marco Polo’s birthplace. Some of these windows open onto a lively canal, crowded with gondolas of tourists, while others overlook a calle crossed by a constant flow of pedestrians from all over the world.
In this context, the portraits break into public space. Their surreal gazes meet those of strangers—visitors, Venetians, travelers—creating a direct and unpredictable dialogue. The installation thus goes far beyond a simple exhibition of works in shop windows; it becomes a form of public art rooted in the very fabric of Venice: its architecture, its waterways, and its cosmopolitan humanity.
Each portrait, created in collaboration with Bugno Art Gallery, consists of 63 photographic tiles made from fragments of butterfly wings. Unlike my earlier works, which used a higher number of tiles, this reduction intensifies the process of transfiguration. The faces are deconstructed, their features distorted, producing characters that radiate a vibrant, unsettling energy. They appear as projections of the unconscious, heirs to Surrealist automatism both in form and concept.
This expressive force takes on particular resonance today. The distorted physiognomies evoke a state of tension, a sense of anxiety that reflects the fragile global climate of recent years, marked by proximity to senseless escalations of conflict.
Set within Venice’s unique environment, the portraits generate an uncanny empathy: the troubled yet magnetic gazes of the works intersect with those of passersby from across the world, creating fleeting but profound connections between strangers.
Through this synergy of place, image, and humanity, Fantastic Portraits becomes not just an exhibition but a form of public art that resonates with the anxious times we are living through. The distorted faces reflect our collective fears and uncertainties, yet by confronting them we can in some way exorcise these anxieties—almost as if the works themselves carried a thaumaturgic power over our consciousness.
