The Swan Song

This collection of paintings aims to raise doubts in the minds of those who view it: can pictorial art survive the darkening light emanating from artificial intelligence? What’s the point, in fact, of arming oneself with a brush and palette and dedicating weeks or months to a pictorial work when, with a few clicks and in a few dozen seconds, one can obtain an image with an equally effective visual impact, with the formal and chromatic characteristics we desire, and generally free of defects?

Let’s try, for a moment, to complicate the problem rather than simplify it, and dedicate a few lines to reflecting on what we mean by “art.” Personally, I have always understood art as a gateway through which to access a content, almost always unconscious and magmatic, that cannot be expressed in any other form. I therefore agree with those who maintain that if something can be expressed in words (or in any other non-pictorial form of expression), it isn’t worth the effort to paint it. This isn’t to say that when faced with a painting, it’s not important to talk, discuss, or interpret. However, the message of a painting that is also art is precisely that secret that words can touch upon, indicate, and pursue, but never fully grasp in its depth.

This is because the unconscious speaks to us with gestures and symbols that, in most cases, we are unable to recognize; and yet, when these gestures and symbols transform into colors, brushstrokes, shapes, lights, shadows, visions, even mistakes (which, of course, are never mistakes), when, in short, they transform into a painting, we have collected those messages in a bottle from the inner ocean and brought them to light: we can read them in the textures of a canvas.

And not only the painter, the first reader of an unseen message emanating from the most hidden recesses of the self, can access all this; The observer too can see himself reflected in this magma and recognize something inexpressible, a chord so deep that he himself had not yet struck and which now resonates in an internal echo that, in an unknown language, tries to tell us that we are not alone.

I believe this “drop of splendor” can only be distilled through manipulation, composition, and personal vision, and therefore an image obtained through an iterative and self-correcting computational system like that of generative AI is essentially devoid of it.

The human imagination generally tends to create new images by drawing from our inner sea populated by memories, suggestions, and archetypes. Similarly, Artificial Intelligences, by accessing an immense database of photographs, paintings, and real images to generate new ones, seem to possess the gift of imagination but not that of poetry, the secret so dear to Ungaretti: the buried harbor of the hermeticists is not in the cloud. Since this database is shared and continuously replenished by millions of users every day, the imagination I am talking about, for AI, becomes very close to what we generally mean when we talk about the collective imagination.

It is therefore a tendency to go beyond computational thinking that distinguishes man from machine. Yet humanity has forgotten this metaphysical component, slumbering it in a frenetic vortex of automatisms and preconceptions that, like a burden, have increasingly crystallized in the human heart. For this reason, what artificial intelligence produces seems so similar to what could be achieved by other human beings: it is not AI that creates content increasingly similar to that of humans, but rather humans who are becoming increasingly similar to artificial intelligence, an automaton that mechanically and unconsciously drags itself through the world, forgetting itself and the life that permeates the Universe.

Doesn’t it seem to you that there’s something diabolical in all this? If that’s what you thought, you’re not far removed from Father Gabriele Amorth’s vision. The renowned exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, in fact, described the devil as a hyper-rational entity who, despite not knowing the future, could predict it with the utmost reliability. Like a computer with immense computational power, he would be able to process billions of data points simultaneously and extrapolate them to predict what will happen.

Are we therefore demonizing artificial intelligence? Not at all! Instead, I believe that these, if used with the right amount of awareness regarding their intrinsic limitations, could represent a revolutionary tool, immeasurably increasing human potential in the arts and crafts that are ours.

In the graphic arts in particular, we are at a turning point, just as painting faced the invention of the camera over 200 years ago. At that moment, painters were forced to rethink their role in the world: the purpose of pictorial art could no longer be to reproduce images, since a convenient, fast, and relatively much cheaper tool fulfilled that task admirably.

Painting, however, did not emerge defeated by this confrontation, as evidenced by all the art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, where artists freed themselves from the burden of necessarily representing reality to open the doors to the most intimate dimensions of interiority. This gave rise to deformations, deconstructions, and hallucinations, and sometimes even led to the creation of entirely new worlds and universes, which access the dimension of dreams, the unconscious, and the imagination.

Now, as then, technology offers art a new perspective that shakes its foundations even more profoundly: a tool that seems to possess all the semblance of a treasure chest studded with creative sparks is capable of producing original artistic content in a very short time, starting from brief and targeted instructions. This forces the art world to reflect deeply: returning specifically to the case of painting, AI presents us with the evidence that if, in general, the purpose of painting is limited to producing an image, the effort made to that end no longer has any meaning. I repeat: today, art, in order not to succumb to the dazzling light emanating from AI, must change, since its ultimate purpose can no longer be to produce original content.

Perhaps we should rediscover what the ancients took for granted since the beginning of time: indeed, art has always had a sacred value throughout human history. Remembering, through the lives of our ancestors, written within us throughout the ages, the times when sacred music resonated with the voice of God, and sacred images allowed us to glimpse His face. The contemplation of Art was that exercise in self-discovery in the world around us, for the purpose of elevating one’s spiritual and emotional state.

This exhibition was therefore conceived with a dual purpose. On the one hand, it is intended to be an invitation to reconnect with this vision of art as a tool for elevation; on the other, it is a true social experiment designed to answer the following question: are we still able to discern the difference between what is alive and what is not? Are we still able to resonate our sacred frequencies with those emanating from a painting engraved with the souls of its creator? To this end, the paintings you will see were created starting from photographic references generated through Artificial Intelligence, harnessing the power of the collective imagination they unleash. These images were then converted to grayscale. Starting from these black and white references, the colors you see in the painting are therefore the fruit of a personal, hallucinatory perception of reality, through those colors that represent the first archetypes with which our inner magma manifests itself in the perceptual projection of the universe, which we experience every moment and which we create every moment through this same experience. Nonetheless, these paintings are further enriched by a transformation that distorts their original form, through the technique of Temporama Alchemico, which I patented four years ago and which to date constitutes the only method in the world that, with exquisitely pictorial tools, allows one to create a painting on canvas that transforms over time. Essentially, the barrier of temporal immobility has finally been broken down in painting. Painting is no longer static but, like life, it transforms and decays, only to cyclically return to a new bloom. The meaning of these portraits is to represent fragments of an internal mirror. When we look in the mirror, we actually see a portrait before us: our own, projected onto a two-dimensional surface with special optical properties that allow the image to reflect. This reflection, which is a physical one, translates into an internal, spiritual reflection when looking at a portrait. Consider the Mona Lisa: the genius and pictorial expertise of Leonardo da Vinci created that painting which, in my opinion, truly deserves the title of the most famous painting in the world. Because Leonardo, with his sfumato technique, was able to give us a face on which no definite expression can be read: we are the ones who project our inner selves onto that face, so if our mood is gloomy, we will see a melancholic Mona Lisa, while if we are happy, we will see a relaxed and serene Mona Lisa. Leonardo thus created a true mirror of the human soul, within which each person can observe a different image. With the paintings of the Temporama Alchemico, in fact, the argument is the same but in the opposite direction: here, the observer who reflects himself in one of these portraits sees a painting that, over the course of minutes, transforms. If the observer is in resonance with the painting, and has therefore already projected part of his interiority into it, seeing his inner mirror transform, he should in turn receive this transformation and change along with the painting. In other words, the painting is no longer a passive but an active subject, capable of effecting an internal transformation on the observer who enters into resonance with it. It is precisely this metamorphosis that encompasses the alchemical meaning of these paintings, which can be considered on three distinct planes of reality: that of matter, where a molecular transformation underlies an artistic transformation, which ultimately brings about an inner transformation. When this happens, my task has reached its apex, for this is the true miracle. Returning to the heart of the exhibition, nothing in the five paintings you will see is accidental: they are all wandering ghosts, allegories of human interiority, seeking salvation. The frame represents the element each of them lacks, and towards which they direct the path of their existence. The metamorphosis they undergo, instead, is what grants them salvation. Thus Leonardo da Vinci, a wandering genius searching for his roots (represented by the bare wood of the frame), saves himself from solitude by becoming the Mona Lisa: it is the Creator who becomes his own creation. Dorian Gray seeks the perfection and splendor of eternity (represented by the gold of the frame, an incorruptible material) and saves himself from the boredom and dullness of a comfortable but monotonous existence, transforming himself into an image of vice and corruption. The Pink Lady seeks the sweetness of love (represented by the floral theme of the frame), and from a delicate and defenseless bride she transforms into a devouring monster, surviving a patriarchal and unloving society that would otherwise annihilate her. Vlad Tepes III seeks human warmth (represented by the blood of the frame) and saves himself by transforming from one of the most terrifying and cruel characters in history into a romantic hero of literature, a monster only in appearance who in reality symbolizes the harshness of ancient values and the desperate search for human love. Finally, Captain Flint, who seeks fluidity in the sea water he navigates throughout his wandering existence (represented by the blue and turquoise hues of the frame), saves himself by transforming into a Jolly Roger, thus sublimating the harshness and rigidity of his actions into a symbol of himself, of his battle, of his passions.

Is the human eye still capable of capturing glimmers of truth in this resonance, in this absolute vibration of mutual individuality, or is this merely a vain illusion, and in this age we are truly listening to the swan song of that ancient art.